


Seaside

by AuntyAgonee



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Adbuction, Domestic Relationship, Forced Marriages, Merstuck, Multi, Overbearing families, Politics of underwater royalty, Stupid dogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 17:35:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 41
Words: 162,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3986782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuntyAgonee/pseuds/AuntyAgonee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kankri has been married to a former mermaid prince for about three years now and is still trying to figure out how to break it to his family.<br/>Meanwhile, the family and the world Cronus turned his back on are trying to reclaim him to be the next king of the underwater city he was raised in. Let's not even get into the fact that Sollux's imaginary friend and first love has just washed up on his favourite beach, complete with a fish's tail and a couple dozen killers on his trail.<br/> With enemies and allies closing in on all sides, how many storms can they weather before they're torn to shreds?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Catching up with that happily ever after

Your name is Kankri Vantas, and you’re trying to figure out how to break it to your father that you’re married to a mermaid.  
Said mermaid watches from the couch with a dog lolling in his lap as you pace across the sun-splashed living room. Looking at him, there is nothing that screams MERMAID!!  
His gills are well concealed on his neck by protective screens of tough flesh that draw away, like an automatic door, when he needs to breathe underwater. Sometimes, you find him with his head in the full kitchen sink, flushing his gills out. He can stay underwater for as long as he wants, but he rarely goes into the water in front of other people. Never, if he can help it.  
The scars along the insides of his legs are easily explained away as a childhood accident. Honestly, if anyone were creative enough to guess that those scars come from the time when the Sea Witch clove his tail and gave him legs, you’d be concerned for their health. The vestigial scars from where his horns once were are covered up by his hair, and the freckles scattered on his shoulders and across the bridge of his button nose only glow in the darkest part of the night. He covers them up with long-sleeved T-shirts and scarves across his nose when you go out at night.  
He doesn’t even look that different to a human. His skin white and his hair is soft, black and unremarkable. The only thing that would make someone look twice at him, perhaps, are his good looks. You’ve really got nothing to worry about.  
Your father may be able to smell a lie at twenty feet thanks to his career in the church, but you doubt he’ll be able to smell the sea on Cronus and suss him out.  
“Why would he even guess that you’re a mermaid?” you say for the fifteenth time, more to yourself than to your husband “Nobody concerns themselves over the species of the person their son has married. They worry about finances and the way they treat their child and their own family and what they want to do with their future and in unfortunate cases, they worry about the race, but no one asks themselves ‘has my son married a mermaid’, do they?”  
Cronus stares at you, shaking his head. He’s quite used to your tangents and little freak-outs and by now knows it’s smartest to stand back and let you work through it. Unless you’re about to hurt yourself worrying, in which case he’ll throw a pillow or something. You’ve excited the dog though, whose shaggy head follows you back and forth across the room like a cat watching a sock swinging on a stick. Her tail thumps the couch and she whines every now and then, eager to play too, but Cronus is holding her on the couch so you won’t trip over her while you pace.  
You wave helplessly at Cronus “Your physical form, while pleasant to look at it, well, it’s nothing unusual. I highly doubt he’s going to find some excuse to paw at your scalp until he finds your scars, but…oh no, what do we tell him about your legs?”  
Cronus rolls his eyes “Same thing we’ve been tellin’ the rest ‘a the world. I fell outta a tree, onto a fence and needed 30 stitches on each side.”  
“What if he doesn’t accept that? Oh my God, your eyes! Your eyes are purple! What do we tell him about purple eyes? He’ll believe one strange little defect- the scars, but he’s not going to believe your eyes are natural, is he?”  
“Why the hell would he think anythin’ else?”  
Crossing the room, you pause for a moment in front of the bay window. The ocean laps at the blond shore, with a surf that is just choppy enough to use it as an excuse not to swim, should someone suggest going.  
Since moving into this house on the beachfront about two years ago, you and Cronus have taken a walk on the beach almost every night. It’s too dangerous to risk nearing the water during the day, when there might be someone about. Even though the beach in front of your house is remote by the standards of this town, not to mention fenced off as private property, the two of you have fallen into the habit of only swimming at night.  
“Kankri,” he says softly “You’re going to bust a pan vessel. Calm down.”  
“Oh! You have to make sure not to use your sea-dweller slang while my father is around. If you thought of me as the Generalissimo of the grammar Nazis, then you’re going to get a rather nasty shock, meeting my father. My Lord, he’s going to hate you. He’s going to hate the way you talk, I’m sorry to say because I don’t find it grating at all after five years of listening to you butcher the English language, but my father will have his belt off and smack you about-”  
It is at this point that Cronus crosses the room and puts his hand over your mouth. Shushing you, he rubs the small of your back and sighs. The dog springs up and runs around your legs. She jumps up and puts her paws on your legs. When you don’t bend to crouch her, she gives up on you and scrabbles out through the open door. Presently, you see her savaging one of her toys in the backyard.  
“Better?” he asks.  
You sigh “I sincerely hope so. I so want this to go well, and he’s already irked that there was no wedding ceremony to speak of, and of course, most predominantly, the fact that he had to find out I was married at all from, if you’ll excuse my language, that dratted blabbermouth Aranea.”  
Cronus smiles “I’ll let it slide.” He passes an arm around your wait and stares past you, out at the ocean “Besides…I want to meet your family. I mean, properly, as your spouse and shit. Not just as the mysterious boyfriend.”  
Officially, Lezlee Vantas and Cronus Ampora have never met. Your father was certainly aware of Cronus being on the scene, but he never made the effort to meet him. You’re not sure he realised how serious you were about Cronus until you moved away with him. He probably expected you to break up after graduating from college, for the separate careers paths of marine biology and psychology to pull you apart. In fact, now that you think about it he was probably counting on it- that you’d pass out of what he was adamantly hoping was just a ‘phase’ when Cronus left you.  
What happened can be likened to eloping, which it essentially was.  
But it was more to get away from Cronus’s family than to escape yours.  
“He’s going to be livid,” you take a deep breath “Not overtly, perhaps, but he will certainly be livid. It was a mistake to run away as fast as we did.”  
“I don’t think we could have waited any longer. The time was right. We both had solid places to land. It was a good thing we jumped when we did, otherwise we might not be as safe as we are right now.”  
You find it hard to disagree with him when you’re in a place like this – in his arms, in front of a seascape that bears no ill will towards either of you, your enemies distant. Life is going well. Better than you expected it to be going. By the age of twenty four, you assumed you would be a single, embittered member of society that spent his time shuttling back in forth between an unfulfilling job and a small, cat-riddled apartment that was perpetually filled with the screams of your next door neighbours. Even when Cronus strolled on scene, both of you fully expected the tiny apartments and unfulfilling jobs for a while.  
Apparently, fate decided that you and Cronus had earned a break after all the pain the two of you went through just to stay together.  
“Don’t tell that to my father, alright? Now I doubt he’ll come in here demanding apologies, because he is quite a gracious man despite the way I have described him. My main concern is that you two will offend each other so badly we cause a deeper schism.”  
Cronus pats your shallow stomach and blows a raspberry on the back of your neck, making you squirm and yelp.  
“You must think I’m the most tactless fucker in town,” he laughs “I’m a prince, Kanny, I know how to flatter important men.”  
You swivel around at the waist and look at him “I don’t want you to just flatter him, though, I’d like you to genuinely enjoy his company, you know? I’d appreciate it if my husband and my family could find some common ground to stand on.”  
He gives your waist a small squeeze “Karkat likes me.”  
You can’t help but scoff “Karkat doesn’t like anyone. He merely expressed his relief that they were coming out to see us because he no longer has to be alone with Dad, and because he can see that little hacker friend of his.”  
Cronus nods “The boy next door. That’s the way we started out.”  
Again, you have to scoff “Please, Karkat is not going to be getting romantically close to anyone any time soon. He wouldn’t know someone was interested in him if they were, and you’ll have to pardon my use of triggering imagery here, sprawled out naked on his bed with a rose clenched between their teeth.”  
He laughs, slipping his hand under your shirt “Sorry, I’m havin’ some trouble picturing that. Could you demonstrate?”  
You bat him away “Off with you, I’ve got to leave for work in fifteen minutes.”  
“That’s just about enough time.”  
“None of that talk in front of my father,” you roll your eyes “Shouldn’t you be ready for work by now?”  
He shakes his head “We’ve all got the day off, didn’t I say? There’s a rubber tide coming in tonight, we think, so we’re all working the night instead.”  
You frown, crossing your arms.  
“I’ll clean up a little before I go back to bed.” he offers.  
That’s not why you’re concerned, even though you nod and pretend this is satisfactory.  
Cronus made his choice a long time ago. He turned his back on the ocean to take your hand a long time ago, but sometimes you can’t help but feel his grasp is tenuous. There were entire worlds, peoples and races and magics totally beyond your scope of imagination under the sea. He describes the cities, lit by the phosphorescence of the eels and the plankton and the plants. The palace of volcanic rock where he was born and raised, its chambers paved with frozen lava, its rooms high and vaulting and full of the groan of the ancient mountain that would sing him to sleep.  
His home was unspeakably old. The creatures that populated it are thought to be extinct in your world, or entirely mythical. Their laws are made according to the will of pagan gods today’s mainstream religions would label barbaric, although Cronus still prays to them on certain nights out of a force of faith and habit. His fellow citizens saw things daily that most of his fellows these days would never dream of outside of the darkest nightmares, and were a more open-minded society because of it.  
In his world, he could swim into a layered sky, through sheets of fish and plants, past whales and whole cities, through the tentacles of a squid and reach the surface after only a half hour of hard swimming. How could he exchange that kind of world for this flat, dry, clambering and unimaginative one he has joined you within?  
Sometimes you wake up in an empty bed and think ‘this is it, he’s gone’, until you hear the toilet flushing or a plate clinking downstairs.  
You dress quickly.  
Tuesdays belong to Gamzee, so you don’t need to make much of an effort to appear professional. You throw on a loud red turtle-neck sweater, which has become something of an in-joke between you and the town. People smile a little wider at you on the streets when they see the neck of the famous sweater under your jacket. Also, Gamzee seems to relax just a fraction more when he sees the sweater. Red tends to have a soothing effect on him for reasons that bewilder him more than they confuse you.  
Looking around your bedroom, you draw the curtains, shutting out the sea and muting the cry of the seagulls. You pull the bed into shape so Cronus won’t have to fuss too much before he goes back to sleep. For a moment, you stand back and stare at the white sheets and comforter. It pleased you so much when the new comforter went down on the bed, replacing a larger green one that you had been using since your university days. Something about the colour was fresh and pure, like snow waiting for footprints.  
You’re fairly certain you put the comforter down a week into your marriage. Certainly, there have been of footprints since then.  
“I never thought I could be this happy,” you mutter to yourself under your breath.

 

Kankri: be yourself from five years ago =========>

“The new guy smells like the sea.”  
“Pardon me?”  
Latula rolls her shoulders back and sniffs, as the smell has followed her “Your new neighbour. Rocking some kind of freaky cologne, bro, or he’s just come off the beach. But his hair isn’t wet.”  
You open your mouth to scold her for talking about other people behind their back, but Kurloz gets there before you: “What’re y’all sniffin’ the poor fuck fer?”  
“I didn’t sniff him,” she retorts and crosses the room to stare out the window “I just noticed when I passed him in the hall. He’s wearing it like a cloak, dude. Look, there he is.”  
You don’t plan to get up. Firstly, ogling at people, particularly and specifically strangers, through a window is extremely bad manners and it would be witheringly embarrassing if you are caught, and even worse when you are in bed tonight and have the time and the quiet to consider your sins. Secondly, you’re not sure you’ve gathered enough willpower yet to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Latula Pyrope without saying something terrible.  
It’s bad enough that she strolls in and out of your room, despite severe and valid restrictions on the traffic of females into the male dorm areas, and drapes herself all over you like she hasn’t got the slightest clue of your feelings, but…you just can’t bear to put yourself close to her, let alone even look at her, sometimes.  
Kurloz shares none of your problems. After all, Latula’s long-time and devoted boyfriend is Kurloz’s best friend. He gets up and stalks over to the window. Their shoulders are jammed up together in a way that strikes you, with your admittedly delicate sensitivities, as slightly scandalous.  
“Holy shit,” says Kurloz appreciatively “Mind that ink. That’s somethin’ special, there.”  
“Wave patterns?” asks Latula, leaning forward “I can’t see them very well. My contacts are fucking me over right now.”  
“There are eye-drops on the sink.” you say before you can stop yourself.  
She turns around and smiles at you, making your heart soar “Thanks babe. Might snitch some of those as soon as I’m finished being a voyeur over here.”  
It’s a simple enough offer. What Latula doesn’t know that is if she rejects it, you’re going to end up agonising over your decision to offer it to her at all. To call yourself names such as ‘pathetic’, ‘needy’ and ‘transparent’ for hours afterwards, then to wonder if she knows, if she is deliberately throwing these things back in your face to punish you.  
Luckily for you, she accepted. Now you’re going to wonder if she knows and has decided to pity you, to indulge you by accepting your little kindnesses, then laughing her ass off with Mituna about how embarrassing it is just to be in the same room with your fawning affections.  
As if to prove something to yourself, you get up off your chair and walk over to the window. You’re absolutely certain for a moment that you’ll stand in between them and not care that your body is touching Latula’s body. Then you balk and duck under Kurloz’s arm to stare.  
It takes you a moment to pick out the new guy that has caused such a reaction.  
Eventually, you pick a pale, angular face out of the crowd. His skin is so white you can only compare it to your albino brother’s complexion, and it is made all the more noticeable by a scattering of light freckles across his neck and the bridge of his nose. Even worse, his face is made gaunt by the blackness of his hair. You stare at his face, trying to make sense of it.  
He doesn’t look right.  
He doesn’t look normal.  
Or human. He looks like an elf masquerading, and from the slight grin curling in the corner of his mouth, which you see from even at this distance, he has nothing but contempt for the people around him.  
“He’s hot.” observes Latula “Really hot.”  
“His face recalls a cat, ta me.” adds Kurloz “I’d fuck him.”  
You’re so transfixed by this stranger you forget to be offended by his strong language, by the strong assumption made of this arrogant man’s sexual character. His tattoos are indeed impressive, but you can’t quite place the design. Identical sleeves of wave-patterns that are slightly Celtic in the way they curl, but at the same time like nothing you’ve ever seen before. As his muscles move underneath his white skin, the waves seem to ripple.  
Latula nudges you in the side, sending a jolt through your body that has nothing to do with the force with which she did it “See something you like?”  
You fluster “No! Good Lord, no! Of course not! I don’t even know him! It would be rude to assume his sexuality in such a manner, and even more so to assume that I have his permission to make him a toy in whatever perverted sexual fantasies you imagine that I imagine!”  
Latula lets out a barking laugh “Whoa, little man, chill out! I’m just messing with you.” she nods towards the man with the wave tattoos “Still, you can’t deny he’s easy on the eyes, can you?”  
“I could list a number of reasons why I could deny such a statement with an iron conviction-” Kurloz clamps a hand over your mouth and pats you on the head with the other one.  
“Rhetorical, motherfucker. Just rhetorical.”

You went back to your desk after that and sweated over an essay on the thought-process of serial killers for an hour or so. You were able to breathe easier after Latula left and started to make real progress. Kurloz lay on his stomach with a large biology textbook open on his bed, occasionally muttering a term to himself that was like an alien word to you. Eventually, he left too, bound for the city to meet up with his girlfriend.  
He paused in the doorway to say: “Don’t work too hard, motherfucker. We’d all like to have y’all at graduation, ya know? Without bein’ in a wheelchair from yer brain shortin’ out.”  
You waved him off abruptly.  
You’re sure he shut the door. Almost a hundred percent sure, because neither of you like the noise of a dorm full of stressed out, hormonal boys trying to be men washing over you while you try to study.  
But the door is open, and when you look up, feeling a prickle run up your spine, the strange leans in the doorframe.  
He looks you up and down in a way that makes you feel as if your skin is being stripped away.  
When he opens his mouth to speak, you’re surprised he uses English, rather than deep, demonic growls or something of that ilk.  
“Hi, I’m the new-w guy next door. Sorry to, y’know-w, barge the fuck in w-when you’re bent over an essay, but I w-was w-wonderin’ if you could point me tow-wards the cafeteria?”


	2. The storm has passed, and the calm is bliss

You are just stepping over the door jamb when Cronus skids into the hallway and throws his arms around your neck.  
The wave patterns gyrate in the most hypnotising way “Hold up! You’re obliged by the house rules to kiss me before you leave.”  
Sighing, you turn around and plant your lips against his forehead, feeling him frown underneath you.  
“That’s cheating.”  
He takes you by the collar of your jacket and kisses you. Not a quick, chaste goodbye kiss either. As much as you are enjoying this, a dozen tasks and appointments are screaming for attention in the back of your head. You slip a hand between the two of you and push yourself away.  
“I’ve got to evaluate a pet murdering child, interview a psychotic and give advice on a prisoner claiming insanity, all before lunch. Not to mention that I’m seeing Gamzee today.”  
Cronus coos “Poor baby. Go on, go save the world.”  
You start to pull away only to have him cup the back of your head and bring you in for another kiss. This one is far less involved than the last one, but he does grab your ass and give it a solid squeeze.  
He’s ready to laugh when you break apart again, seeing your scowl “Sorry, babe, house rules. I have to do that when you’re wearing that sweater.”  
“Get some sleep. Call me before you go, if I’m not back home by then.”  
Cronus waves you off, looking like a snapshot of those 50’s pictures of ideal families if it were the husband that was depicted staying home with the apron and the feather duster. You get into your car without looking back, knowing that you’d end up running back and diving into his arms. Today will be a long, punishing day. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to snatch another nap at your desk before you see Gamzee. You’ve really got to stop letting Cronus keep you up so late at night, no matter how stimulating his company is.  
The car’s door shrieks as you open it. Another thing to add to your to-do list: WD40 for the car door.  
There’s a light scattering of papers on the front and shotgun seats. Sighing, you collect them up in messy piles and toss them into the backseat. Each one is a file requiring desperate attention and they will most likely eat up all of your lunch-break.  
The car starts with little complaint. Since the winter’s chill has retreated, you’ve been able to start the car up easily. When the snow fell, you felt obliged every time to get out of the car, circle it and kick at the tyres or pound on the hood. It’ a load off your mind to know you can rely on the cosy four-door piece of junk that supported you through your college years. Cronus prefers the Jeep and won’t listen to your assertions that it makes him drive like a nervous grandmother and look like an absolute berk.  
The drive to town is uneventful. As the dune-brush and the racing sea on either side of the car give way to sidewalks and the beginnings of docks and beach-front property, you crank the window down and take in a deep gulp of the ocean air. Your town is renowned for the purity of its sea.  
The various authorities of the town proudly point to its strict environmental laws and fishing policies. Cronus snickers behind his hand and tells you about a massive concentration of magical this-and-that’s which behave like filters and would keep the water sparkling clean even if the land-dwellers were doing everything in their power not to help.  
Driving through the suburbs on the outskirts of the town, you let your mind wander. Wander over the houses and the beach, past your own little mansion on the headland, and to the ocean kingdom where Cronus was raised. How do they start their mornings out there? Do they even have mornings? Somehow, you doubt the necessary amount of sunlight would be able to penetrate the depths that they call home to create the difference that humans define as ‘night’ and ‘day’.  
Surely, you and Cronus have discussed this a hundred times. In the early days, just after he had come clean about his unusual ethnicity, he would whisper secrets across the pillow that will get you killed if you repeat them to anyone else. Somehow, the fact and the fiction of your imaginings of that home have chased each other around so much in your head you can’t sort them out.  
Then you have to stop thinking about mermaids and their kingdoms because you’ve arrived at the first substantially populated square in town. Here, the pedestrians take the cross-walks more to be polite suggestions than legal zones of safety. Everyone from nursing mothers to school children to elderly dart (or hobble) all over the streets. Each one of them trusts the traffic to stop and idle for them. As a school-aged child in their summer-break dress dashes out in front of your car, you’re struck by the evil urge to floor it and teach the brat a lesson. This is, of course, a natural reaction, and not only because she just ran out in front of a green light. Humans are still hunters, deep down in their neural soup.  
The evidence of that is scattered in the backseat, lost somewhere among a disturbed child’s and a grieving housewife’s files.  
As her foot hits the other side of the pavement, the kid waves to you in thanks. Your heart melts and you can’t help but wave back. You’re not sure that you know her, but you’re going to add her to the ‘do not run over’ list, just for that little wave.  
Further into the heart of the town, the houses melt into shops.  
The small grocery stores, still processing some heavy traffic despite the chain supermarket that set up on the opposite street three years ago. A small cinema whose owner is on all the town councils and forever playing ‘Sunshine Boulevard’ in the smallest showing room. A post office that also serves as a stationary shop. A large library next door to a video game shop that are forever locked in fierce competition for the young patrons. A handful of other shops you occasionally go into.  
The only shop on this street that holds your interest (as the bookstores are all on another street) is the Café. It lost its sign to a big storm about five years ago and since then no one has bothered to replace it, claiming it adds to the salt-beaten, windswept charm of the town’s aesthetic. The official name is rumoured to be something along the lines of ‘the Dockside’, but the town has fallen into the habit of referring to it as simply the Café.  
Stopped at a red light, you take the opportunity to search for Sollux.  
You spot him, wrapped up in an apron like a scarecrow and waiting the tables of a crowd of harassed commuters demanding complex coffees before they have to get to work in the town’s small business district. He’s got a look on his face like somebody just slapped him with a soiled diaper. His hair is a little more blonde than when you last saw it, which leads you to believe he’s even begun to reject the typical physical traits of one from his culture.  
Sollux has spent the better part of the year following his brother’s death trying to ‘un-Japanese’ himself, as he puts it. You suppose you should be offended on the behalf of the Japanese community, but you distinctly remember a period of your teenage years when you did everything you could possibly do to distance yourself from your overwhelming Saudi heritage. It didn’t work. Sollux’s attempt to scramble away from his family and their refusal to mourn his brother properly won’t work, if he intends to accomplish it by not peppering his English with a couple of Japanese words, or refusing to eat Bento boxes anymore.  
He’ll come around.  
Spotting you through the glass-front, Sollux makes a show of taking off his glasses and rubbing his temples, as if to say ‘can you believe these fucking people?’.  
You wave to him, biting down on a smile.  
Sollux doesn’t know Karkat is coming to town. Karkat himself has forbidden you from mentioning it, apparently because he plans to ambush Sollux on the beach or at his house. You’re not sure why, but you’re pretty certain Karkat just doesn’t want to get his hopes up over seeing Sollux. The last time they parted company in misery, and Mituna’s death hadn’t much to do with it.  
You hope to God it goes well.

Kankri: be your college self again========>  
College self: walk with Cronus ==========>

 

His name turns out to be Cronus.  
He won’t tell you his first name, and that ends up being only one of the score of things you sense he is withholding from you. You’ve tried to get several things out of him by slipping a few subtle questions into your conversation.  
So far, all you’ve managed to ascertain is that he isn’t from this city, where the university lives. He mentions his family live far away and are going to be eager to hear from him. The way he talks about them- a slight droop, or a missed beat in the bravado that seems natural to him- it makes you suspect that he and his family would rather not be on speaking terms. You know the feeling, but you don’t tell him that.  
Kurloz is fond of telling you that for all your blather about rights this and ethics that, your social tact would fit comfortably on the head of a pin. At least you know not to stick your nose into somebody else’s family business.  
Cronus is studying marine biology. He tells you this with a slight grin in the corner of his mouth. The grin never really goes away, even when he briefly talks about his family, and you find yourself mesmerised by it. Your eyes keep drifting to the corner of his mouth, although you realise you’ve probably imagined the little smile. Regardless, it is entirely inappropriate of you to stare.  
You never meant to stay down here, actually.  
You intended to do your neighbourly duty and nothing else. Somehow he roped you in. Not with anything so obvious as a pick-up line. It was much slower. Almost sinister, the way he managed to convince you to stay with him without even asking. You know you should leave. You’re not sure why you ‘know’ this, but something tells you you’d be biting off more than you can chew, getting involved with him. Just talking to him.  
But it’s been a long time since you wanted to talk to someone. Like, really talk to them, not just flap your gums to be polite or under the misguided assumption that someone is actually interested in what you have to say.  
You and Cronus finished your coffees about fifteen minutes ago. Presumably to keep you in his company, Cronus asked you to show him where a few buildings were so he wouldn’t have to wander around the next day, looking for his classes and ticking off his teachers on the first day for being late.  
Cautious of what he might do and what he might not do (although you can’t begin to imagine that he will try anything), you stick to the paths that are well-lit and populated by plenty of students. Couples that pass are holding hands or kissing.  
Keeping a safe distance between you and Cronus, you’re doing your best not to look at him. Doing so makes your mouth ache in the most unsettling way. Instead, you busy yourself by asking him a few careful questions which yield no satisfying results and tell him a dozen useless things about the campus. He talks back to you like you’re absorbing, engaging and interesting.  
It kind of hurts.  
Finally, you manage to gather your courage for a serious question “Can I ask something rather delicate?”  
“I’m not telling you which team I play for.” he says playfully.  
“Oh for heaven’s sake! That’s none of my business, unless you’re going to try to make it my business. To be honest I’m not at all interested in the mechanics of your love life,” you have to take a deep breath, your tongue dry from the lie “I was only curious as to your reasons for joining this campus, in particular. Which programme attracted you?”  
You make a sweeping gesture around the campus with a wry smile “I understand that we’re not one of the most impressive campuses on offer. Nor are we one of the more terrible or mediocre. I’m just curious as to what drew you here?”  
For a moment, you’re sure this is it. That cool expression will slip- you’re sure it’s a mask- and reveal the secrets underneath. You’ve only known him for two hours and you know there’s no reason for him to go spilling his darkest secrets to you.  
What even is it that you want to know? Why do you want this from him?  
Cronus doesn’t think about it very much before he answers “I was sent here, actually. My dad picked it out. And yeah, before you ask, my dad makes a lot of my choices for me.”  
The bitterness in his voice surprises you “And you couldn’t rebuke him?”  
He shrugs “Not the w-way I w-was raised. Talkin’ back to my old man ain’t really a liberty I can take.”  
You’re quiet for a moment.  
What does this mean? Is he asking you for help, or simply stating the facts?  
This isn’t a cry for help, is it?  
Oh, damn, he’s looking at you.  
You open your mouth and hope for the best “I understand that. My father isn’t the sort of man you disagree with either, but a disagreement happens to be how I ended up here.”  
He cocks an eyebrow “Ran aw-way from home, huh?”  
You nod “All the way to higher education.”  
“W-what w-went w-wrong?”  
Despite that short, desperate fantasy that he was going to tell you everything, you’re not about to spill your guts to a complete stranger “Many things that didn’t necessarily need to become great sins, I suppose.”  
He senses this is not a good conversational topic “Thanks for showin’ me around. This place is a labyrinth, ain’t it? I’d’ve been lost forever.”  
You nod “I promise you, we haven’t got a Minotaur.”  
Cronus laughs.  
The two of you walk on around the same dark streets for some time, with no goal in mind but to enjoy each other’s company until the excuses have been exhausted. By the end of the night, when you have said some slightly awkward goodbyes at your doors, you feel as if the breath has been stolen from your lungs.  
The clock tells you it is far too late to be up on the first night of university, even though Kurloz is still out and it won’t surprise you if he’s out until dawn. You lie in your bed and stare at the ceiling, listening to Cronus for the longest time.  
Eventually, the sound of his heavy, almost uncertain footsteps stop and you are lulled to sleep by the drumming of the rain on the window. A storm moved in while you weren’t looking.


	3. Eridan

Your name is Sollux Captor and you’re freaking the fuck out.  
Up until about two minutes ago, you didn’t have the time to freak out. What, with the gaggle of commuters dominating the floor of your work-space, all of them hooting indignantly over caffeinated beverages, you barely had the space in your brain to think about anything except for how much you hated them all. Now that the last of them have scuttled off to their yuppie stations, the shop is quiet. You dropped into a chair the moment they were gone and sighed from the depths of your soul.  
“Are you ok?” asks the girl behind the counter.  
“I’m fine,” you lie, and not convincingly “I just feel a little faint.”  
“I hate them too,” she says “So much. Hang in there, babe, the morning rush is over. We don’t have to do that again until lunchtime.”  
Her name is Nepeta Leijon. You’ve known her since you were too young to spell your own name, and you like her for the most part. She’s not a bad person, as things go, but she’s definitely not going to get the truth out of you if she asks. You’re going to the grave with that one.  
Nepeta narrows her eyes “You don’t look so good, Sol, and I mean worse than normal. Did you sleep?”  
“Fuck you Nepeta.”  
Since the manager has disappeared into the storerooms, Nepeta slides her butt across the counter without a care for hygiene or etiquette and thumps the back of her little hand on your forehead. She frowns, confused by her findings.  
She grows quizzical “You don’t feel sick, but you look like you’re about to barf. An organ, not just what you ate for breakfast.”  
“I didn’t eat breakfast,” retorts Sol, unable to help himself “Can you not put your sweating mitts all over me?”  
Immediately she cups your face and squishes your thin cheeks together. Moulding your face into a smile, she rolls up onto the tips of her toes and leans in. For a moment you think she’s going to kiss you. On the mouth. Your heart drops right out of your ribs and splashes into the acid of your stomach. Briefly, you consider punching her in her hard belly and escaping through the glassfront. But she only touches her lips to the tip of your nose. The crisis averted, you release the breath you didn’t know you were holding.  
Kissing still scares the crap out of you, even after what happened last night.   
You’ve spent most of your life agonising over every single interaction, searching for the underlying romantic overtures and themes and all that subversive shit. It’s exhausting, remaining loyal to a first love. You suppose now that he’s back, he’s going to be your third love as well. If you can truly count that short jaunt with Aradia as anything but a desperate attempt to hack your way out of a first love’s shackles.  
Well, you can, but that stupid bastard languishing on the shore has managed to reduce your second love to a silly adolescent fling by just being here.  
God, you hate him.  
You’d almost rather let Nepeta kiss you on the mouth, with tongue and everything, than try to live again knowing that he’s down at the beach. What’s stopping you?  
You don’t really want to kiss her- she’s an old friend. That’d be not like kissing a sister or a cousin, but more like trying it on with the family cat. Also, you don’t want to be kissing anyone except for the guy you were kissing last night.  
“I can’t be here.”  
Nepeta frowns “Ok.”  
You scramble to explain yourself “I’m sick. I can’t stand straight, the room’s swimming…I’m dying, I think.”  
She waves your explanations away “Ok, you’re sick. Whatever you want me to say. I’ll call in somebody else to cover you.” she pauses, looking you up and down with her hands on her hips “Go do whatever you need to do to feel better.”  
Suddenly, you resent her for understanding so quickly “I’m not made of glass.”  
She nods “I know.”  
“I’m not gonna hurt myself.”  
Taking you by the shoulders, Nepeta turns you and steers you towards the door “I know.”  
“I need to get my-”   
She presses your bag into your hand before you can finish complaining.  
That’s the problem with old friends- they know all your tricks. Nepeta has taken a no-nonsense stance against the various shades of pedantic and bullshit you’ll try to colour the day with. Like all of your friends who have managed to stick around (you can just about count them on one hand), she has perfected it. She is immune to the special Captor brand of bullshit. It gives her amazing powers of resistance that scare you silly.  
“Feel better!” she says.  
Then with a final kiss on the cheek and a pat on the butt, she sends you out of the shop. You suppose you should at least linger at the glass-front for a few minutes, looking bewildered or confused. But your legs start moving and the next time you can bring yourself to look up, the beach is across the street. You thought maybe if you kept your head down, you could take yourself somewhere else. Or make time pass faster.  
You’re not sure what you thought. You only know that you want to see him as badly as you don’t want to have to see him.  
Still, it’s a relief to have the sand under your feet. Before you know it, you’re running. If anyone can ever truly run on sand- you’re sort of just frantically stumbling over a shifting ground that keeps trying to bury your feet under too-hot sand. It gets in your jeans. You kick it up in sprays behind you. The wind pushes it into your hair and face, making your eyes sting.  
The distance to the cove is unreasonably far. For the entire half mile, you keep up a constant stumbling, awkward pace and only stop at the bottom of the headland. Taking a deep breath, you dart up the side of it. The slope is so steep you have to go up on all-fours and seize long, itching tufts of grass to keep yourself from over-balancing. The top is a plateau. Rather than continuing down the other side, back to the sands of the beach, you go to the edge of the headland.  
For a moment, you sit on the edge and stare at the water lapping at the shore beneath you. When you jump down, you will land in a narrow spit of gravel and slick stones that juts into the ocean. The landing was more of a slither down the short rock-face as you remember it, flailing your small legs to find a purchase in the slippery surfaces. This time, you make it down easily. You take the equivalent of two steps and find a wide expanse of rock underneath your feet. The cove is only a few minutes away.  
Will he even be there?  
You shouldn’t have run away last night.   
You should have stayed, talked to him, listened to him, maybe even confirmed that he was real. For all you know, you’re chasing a hallucination into the place you swore you wouldn’t go back to.  
The walk along the rocks is heart-achingly familiar. You used to run along these rocks, not caring if you scraped yourself. That summer, you never had enough time to spend with Eridan. Every minute that wasn’t spent in the cove was an agony, a waste and unreasonably long.   
You find yourself moving faster. Now that your body is that of a grown-man (almost- seventeen isn’t bad), your movements are much more sure. Perhaps not graceful, with the lankiness of your limbs and the brutal cusses you mutter under your breath when you almost slip.  
What the hell will Eridan think when he sees what you have grown into? The Sollux he knew was chubby-cheeked and a little rotund, and short. The one he saw briefly last night is tall and long and shaped like a scare-crow. He probably didn’t get a good look at you either, considering how fast you fucked off out of there.  
God, you don’t want to do this.  
You can’t do that all over again, not now, when you’ve got a life you half-enjoy and a prospect for a future you wouldn’t actually mind pursuing.   
But you can’t turn back.  
The cove is the same cove you dream about sometimes.  
One half is a soft, blond shore with tall grass growing at the base of the shelter of the cliff. The other half is a shelf of black rock reaching into the sea. The same deep, blue rock-pool is nestled in a dip in the rocks. It is much larger and thick with green seaweed than the last time you saw it. And you haven’t seen this place since you were nine years old.  
Eight years is plenty of time for a place to change, but for some reason, the cove is frozen in time.   
Salt spray in the air. The ocean unfurling in a great, green field far into the distance.  
Eridan is all that is missing.  
“Eridan?”  
How long has it been since you said his name out loud?  
Probably not since the last time you talked to Karkat- a lot further into the past than it should be, actually, about a year.  
You watch the water for a few minutes. The shadows of the foam play into promising shapes. Your heart lifts and plunges alternately a few times as you think you see Eridan’s shape- some grown version of it- coming into the shallows, but each time it proves to be a trick of the light. Finally, the adrenalin has worn off. The tips of your fingers itch, and you’re exhausted.  
Last night was sleepless. You drop down into the sand heavily and shrug off your apron and shoes, then your bag. From the depths of a front pocket, you retrieve a battered glasses-case that you rarely open. Inside sit a small pair of glasses with thick lens and stylishly nerdy black arms. This is a relic of the days before your glasses had to be red and blue, to match your ridiculous genes.   
When you shared a prescription for terrible eyesight with a mermaid.

 

On the summer of your ninth year, your mother died.  
They told you she died in her sleep. They didn’t tell you that she helped herself along into sleep, into death, with bottles of sleeping pills, but you guessed it for yourself. Later, as Mituna tried to cope, he blurted it out; blaming you for driving her to suicide with the demon he was convinced was in you for about a year. You wanted to laugh about it with Eridan, but he was gone by then. He was only with you for one summer.  
You met him on the beach. A strong wind blew your hat off into the water. Knowing your father would complain, and probably guess where you were when you admitted to losing your hat just from the guilt on your face, you were determined to chase it down. Determined in only the way that a recently half-orphaned child can be to make something right in their life.  
Chasing it down the shore, you willed it not to be swept into deeper waters. It flitted along in the shadows, floating on top even though it should have sunk with the weight of the water that soaked it. When you ran out of beach and began to climb the slope, it stalled in the water, waiting for you. Only when you had safely reached the bottom of the slope and were on the move again did the hat allow itself to be taken up in the waves again. You were gaining on it by the time that you caught it in the shallows of the cove.  
Just as you reached for it, a small hand emerged from the waves and offered it to you. A little boy rose from the water from the shoulders up.  
The first thing you noticed was the splashes of purplish freckles that stood out all over his grey skin. The second were his horns. Curved back, like waves, and candy orange. Then, the gills in the skin of his neck. Soft and purple, reminding you of tissue paper.  
He smiled shyly “You lost this.”  
Somehow, the magic of meeting a mermaid didn’t stop you from being a jerk “Why did you make me come down here?”  
The mermaid cringed and flushed a deep purple with embarrassment “I w-wanted to talk to you.”  
You took the hat back from him, wary of touching his cold fingers “Oh. How come?”  
“I’v-ve nev-ver met a human before. Not properly.”  
It took a moment for it to sink in that he was not human.  
The horns and the gills made you uneasy, but it was the chubby tail that waved lazily in the shallows that really scared you. Slowly, you backed out of the water and planted yourself on dry sand. He watched you with fear in his eyes, and you returned the stare. For a moment, neither of you said anything.  
You finally broke the silence “Do you live underwater?”  
He nodded.  
“Is it nice?”  
He shrugged “There’s a lot of fish. It gets really cold too.”  
You exchanged names. His sounded alien in his accent, one that you couldn’t really identify, but could easily make sense of.   
Eridan Ampora.  
You liked the way he made ‘Sollux Captor’ sound in his voice.

“Are you gonna run aw-way again?”  
You turn around and see he has pulled himself onto the shelf of rock. He leans on his side, his tail flicking lazily in the water. Age has stripped him of his baby-fat. Where his body was once soft and adorably flabby, sharp, hard muscles rippled under his skin. The greyish tones of his youth are now much paler and flushed with delicate purples not unlike the colours of his gills. His hair is a little bit longer and looks fantastic, the way it frames his high cheekbones, his noble features.   
His tail has filled out a lot too. You look at it the way you guess other guys would look at their friends who were girls, observing the effects of a puberty they weren’t around to watch on their curves. It’s sleek, shinier. Much stronger, obviously, and beautifully coloured in a range of purples and subtle blues.  
You wonder briefly if it’s normal to be attracted to a tail.  
“No,” you say “I’m not.”


	4. Yegen

Gamzee finds you in the middle of a paper storm.  
Although everything is obsessively arranged in files that are colour-coded and clipped tightly shut with paperclips, it does kind of look like a tornado ran through your office and threw your entire career of work and then some in every direction. Were it not for the bright, blood-red colour of your sweater, you doubt Gamzee would be able to pick you out in the mess.  
He hesitates in the doorway, his eyes wandering over the vague shapes of the furniture buried under the paper-drifts and the bookshelves covered with even more paper mass. Finally, he spots you near to your desk, up to your elbows in profiles of murderers. The filing cabinet next to you has been emptied with every drawer gaping.  
“Lemme guess,” he slips a hand into his pocket “Y’all robbed a bookstore, but y’all couldn’t get away with the covers ‘n spines.”  
You grimace “It heartens me to see that while your psyche continues to suffer, at least your sense of humour remains positive and intact.”  
Gamzee laughs “Need any help, brother?”  
“As far as anyone knows, no, I do not, and you have never touched the myriad of top-secret materials scattered before you. But unofficially, yes, please.”  
Shutting the door carefully behind him, Gamzee gets on his knees and scoops up one of the green binders. Green for ‘god-awful’, with a little red sticker on the corner for ‘cannibal’. In your office, you have employed an “innovative” (a word that just begs air-quotes every time Cronus recalls the way your boss described the filing system) personal filing system that colour-codes according to level of crime and how heinous it is, as heinous is now officially a ‘thing’ by which you can measure in your profession. Your stomach does a backflip when you recognise the mug-shot glaring through the transparent flap.  
“Oh! Uh, don’t look in there. Grisly evidence. Don’t look in there, please, the nightmares would set you back weeks.”  
Gamzee peers at the mug-shot “Ain’t this that racist bitch that was eatin’ up all them Mexican little boys from her orchard?”  
“Yes that’s that particular cannibal. Don’t look in there.”  
Pulling a face, Gamzee puts the file down and slides it behind him “Listen, why don’t I set ta gettin’ these back where they supposed to be, an’ that way y’all got less ta shift through.”  
You nod, dislodging a paperclip from your hair “I’m sorry Gamzee, this is extraordinarily unprofessional of me. Consider the rest of my afternoon yours.”  
“Y’all wanna therapise me while we’re de-messin’? I’m kinda fixin’ towards thinkin’ we might not get through this and still have time fer the sesh, if y’all’re fixin’ to make it back to Mr Vantas ‘fore midnight.”  
You have to laugh drily at that “Alright. Sounds like a plan to me.”  
You take a moment to study his face and notice something you should have noticed when he first walked through the door. A little shadow crawling across his face- a little worry he can’t quite repress. Despite all the training sessions that are supposed to galvanise you to the troubles of your patients, you’re really quite attached to Gamzee. At the moment you’re seeing four others regularly, but Gamzee is in the most frequent. He has weekly appointments twice and you happen to know his family personally.  
Kurloz was your roommate all the way through college, even after his accident.  
Whenever Gamzee has a set-back, you feel it almost as keenly as if it were your own pain. Or your own child’s pain. Gamzee’s father refers to Gamzee as your ‘practice son’ for a reason.  
“Something on your mind?”  
Gamzee pauses “’Fore I get into that shit…what the motherfuck am I lookin’ for?”  
You’re quite used to his habitual use of foul language by now, so much so that you kind of find it endearing “Yellow folder. Blue strip. A child murderer. The picture is of a little girl with pigtails, in a brown coat.”  
He swallows hard “Gotcha. Some ‘American Horror Story’ shit right there, huh?”  
You nod and wait for him to start to talk. With Gamzee, you have to be patient. Although the way he talks and acts doesn’t suggest it, Gamzee is very shy and a fear of rejection dogs his every move. You’ve long since decided that comes from a deep-seated problem in his personality that just sort of came with the package. Nothing his father created, and nothing his father can fix, but not for lack of trying. You wish your father would take a leaf out of Graa’ant Makara’s handbook when it comes to handling Karkat.  
Eventually, Gamzee gets started. He busies himself with bussing the appropriate files to the appropriate drawers in a filing cabinet beside him, pretending to be less perturbed than he is.  
“So, Baba told me somethin’ kinda strange this morning’. ‘Bout the family I mean.”  
Your heart skips another beat. There are so many weird things you know about the Makaras that have kept you up late at night, you can’t even begin to imagine how what he now knows must be bothering Gamzee.”  
He continues, doing his best not to make eye contact “Thing is… I don’t hafta call him Baba no more, if I don’t wanna. ‘Stead I could call him yeğen.”  
Your Turkish is extremely rusty/non-existent, so you’re unsure what he means “What does that mean?”  
He takes a deep breath “It means nephew.”  
This takes a minute to sink in.  
“Nephew.” you repeat “Graa’ant is your nephew?”  
He shrugs “He tol’ me…so, he ain’t really my father, in the biological way a thinkin’, that’s my motherfuckin’ Grandad. Y’know, the old Goat.”  
Your mind buzzes. Gamzee doesn’t make lie, or have hallucinations he confuses with reality, or intentionally invent himself alternate realities so he doesn’t have to worry about the real problems of his real life. What he’s telling you is 100% true.  
At least, exactly what he has been told.  
“I’ve never met your grandfather.” you say, picking up another file.  
“I ain’t ever laid eyes on the ol’ fuck in my life,” mutters Gamzee with surprising venom “But ‘cording ta Baba, he’s where I came from. Turns out I got me another abi, y’know? Bigger ‘n older than Loz is. The Goat had him back when he was in his 20s, maybe a lil’ bit earlier. Young enough that there was a big motherfuckin’ stink ‘bout it an’ the kid was raised in a kinda hush-hush arrangement with the Goat’s sister, my nine. So, this kid, he goes off and does his thing and gets his life and has himself a kid ‘fore he gets killed in the war.”  
Gamzee puts stows another file in the cabinet and looks out the window. From here, you have a good view of the sea. It surprises you to look up sometimes, and realise it has always been there. It does now, when you follow Gamzee’s gaze out the window to the crystal green blanket rolling out into the distance.  
Sometimes, you forget the family you will build will have dark secrets too, but unlike any other family’s.  
Gamzee looks back down at the floor with a sigh. He has cleared himself a small space of floorboards clean of files. A little island in the middle of the ocean.  
“So that kid that that kid has is my Baba. He and my nine fuck off outta Turkey ‘cos they’re sure Saddam’s gonna be knocking on they door any day, askin’ fer all the Kurds in the neighbourhoods to please give ‘emselves up, an’ they end up in the States. Baba does his high-school and his college and meets your dad and sets himself up a nice motherfuckin’ little set-up, he meets the lady I was callin’ anne and has Loz. Then when Loz is six and anne is dead, I pop up outta nowhere. The Goat had an affair with somebody. One of his students I think. Bitch didn’t want me, and neither did the Goat, so they pass me onto Baba because my nine’s too fuckin’ old ta deal with one more cast-off son.”  
He swallows hard. He traces the grain of the wood beside his knees with a forefinger, collecting his thoughts.  
“So he raised me. Why do y’all think he did that?”  
You reply automatically “Because he loves you. You’re his child, regardless of who your biological father is.”  
“But…I put him through so much shit with all my motherfuckin’ problems, an’ I find out I ain’t even his? I mean…why didn’t he send me off? I’d send me off. I’d not care, if I got me, not care ‘bout all the shit that goes on in my head. I’d just want me gone…if that makes sense?”  
You nod “I certainly understand the sentiment, but I’m afraid your father wouldn’t. I’m sure he regarded you as one of his own the moment he was asked to take care of you.”  
He shakes his head “He weren’t asked. He was sorta…forced, I guess. The ol’ Goat sent me over with all the papers…I think there was somethin’ kinda shady ‘bout it, but he just sorta handed me off and ain’t seen me since I got squeezed out. But Baba didn’t have a say in gettin’ me.”  
You can’t pretend you’re not alarmed. As a psychiatrist, you’re accustomed to being handed giant bombshells of trauma and potential complexes such as this as casually as if they were greeting cards. But Gamzee is especially important to you, as Graa’ant is. You know them well and you know that while Graa’ant is, essentially, incredibly shady, slightly creepy and sort of unnerving, he is also a caring father and a good friend to have to rely on. Never once have you felt as if you might have to take Gamzee away from him.  
But you’re not quite sure what to do here. Convince Gamzee of what he already knows, of course, or rather to give him permission to let himself believe that his father does love him and doesn’t care that he is apparently in fact his uncle, rather than his son. That’s the first step. The second step will be to crawl under your desk, rock back and forth and place a call to your husband with urgent demands for an assurance that you have done the right thing. The third? You’ll give Graa’ant a call and try to think of a sensitive way to confirm what you’re being told.  
“Gamzee, you know he loves you.”  
Gamzee shrugs “’Course. But…I ain’t his ta love, am I?”  
You fold your arms, attempting to be firm and carefully neutral at the same time “Well, what would you have happen? Would you rather go back to the Goat?”  
His jaw twitches “Nah.”  
“Would you like to meet with your biological father then? From the sound of it, he was little more than a sperm donor.”  
“That kinda shit fucks up brothers too. Havin’ sperm bank daddies.” Gamzee looks into the distance again “Kid in my grade, an art student…she did a project ‘bout having a sperm donor dad and bein’ fucked up all quiet-like, in all these subtle ways y’all wouldn’t even know ta look at her.”  
“Gamzee, do you feel that your relationship with your father was majorly flawed in any way before you found out the…the biological nature of your blood relationship to him?”  
He takes a moment to figure out what you’re asking, then another to decide “Nah. Not…well, I can’t talk ta him ‘bout this head shit, but we knew that already.”  
You nod “And do you think you should allow the nature of your blood relationship to him to change the way you behave towards him? Consider this: he has raised you as a son for the seventeen years he has been, as you say, ‘stuck with you’ and never once treated you any less favourably than Loz, excuse me, Kurloz.”  
Your slip-up has at least coaxed a smile to his mouth “Well he still won’t let me watch R-18 movies.”  
“And you’re not yet 18,” you point out civilly “Out of the myriad of issues that deserve your concern, I don’t think this is one of them. Yes, it is a valid issue to be talked about, but I don’t believe it’s worth the worry you’re giving it.”  
“But it ain’t somethin’ I can jus’ shake the fuck off. It’s kinda like findin’ out yer adopted.”  
You’re very tempted to respond to that with ‘or like finding out that the man you love is a mermaid’, but you hold your tongue “I understand where you’re coming from. Sudden revelations are unsettling and sometimes they should change things, but I don’t believe this is the case. I don’t believe that after all of the energy and love your father has put into raising you that you should stop thinking of him as your father. The fact that he told you this at all indicates that he trusts you to know these kinds of things, even though, well…”  
“Even though I’m fucked in the head six ways from Sunday.” suggests Gamzee, a little more brightly than before “I dunno what I’m gonna do yet.”  
“Perhaps talking with Graa’ant about how you feel is a good place to start?”  
Gamzee rolls his eyes “Maybe. I dunno. I just wanted ta tell y’all.”  
If you were next to him, you would have given him a brotherly pat on the back. Perhaps even a hug. From the other side of the room, all you can do is imagine his face when he sees Karkat walking up the beach to greet him. It’s like a snapshot from a bad drama in your mind, going wrong in all the ways it could and probably will go wrong.  
At least they won’t have to re-hash the same old pointless arguments.  
Karkat will have something new to freak out over when he next sees Gamzee.

Kankri: be college Kankri ========>  
College Kankri: deal with these gibbering fools=========>

When Loz and Latula hear that not only has the mysterious stranger with the wave tattoos moved in next door, but that you walked with him for the better part of a night, they almost crush you in their press for the ‘deet’s, as Latula puts it.  
You tell them as little as you can get away with. Upon waking up the next morning, you found there was a sort of aching, rosy glow in your chest. It was embarrassing to experience, like waking up to find you had had a wet dream in the middle of the night. You even found yourself glancing furtively across the room where Loz lay reading in his bed, like he might notice something was different about you. Those fears actually proved not to be unfounded. The moment your eyes met, he smelled the scandal on you and immediately set to work on getting it out of you.  
So you told him, hoping that Cronus couldn’t hear your mumbling confessions as easily as you could hear his footsteps through the wall last night.  
Once Loz knows, Latula knows almost immediately. You swear, it’s almost like they share a mental connection specifically for sharing gossip. She catches you off-guard around lunch time. Your mind is elsewhere as you walk up the path, early for your next class. Most of it is on Cronus. Another, smaller part is thinking about the girl who is about to ambush you. Lately, you have been constantly tortured by thoughts of her smile, her smell and her stupid jokes. It’s been a long time since Latula took the back seat to anyone else.  
She sneaks up behind you and throws an arm around your shoulder, sending an electric charge through your body. Unaware of the effect she has had on you, she tugs you even closer into her muscle-taut side and squeezes your arm. Her grin is wide and suggests something very sleazy.  
“Soooo,” she purrs “The new guy. The new, hot guy that smells like the ocean. You and him are on walking-around -campus-together-at-night terms now.”  
You make a weak attempt to shrug her off “Latula, please, it’s hardly worth the energy you’re putting towards thinking about it. I just showed him where the cafeteria was and where his classes were.”  
She laughs “Wow, Kanny! I didn’t even think like that! I was just mad at you for being first on the scene to greet the mysterious stranger, y’know? I figure you cracked his head up and scooped out all the delicious secrets so there’d be no more tall dark and mysterious left for the rest of us to appreciate, but jeez man, did you…you know?”  
“No!” you are both horrified and excited by the suggestion “I would never! Hardly with a man I only met yesterday!”  
She laughs raucously, attracting attention “Oh Kanny! Calm down, man! No one’s having a go at your honour! I believe you, I believe that chastity belt’s still locked in place.”  
She looks down on you, says that little part of your mind still devoted to Latula, she thinks you’re a stupid, silly boy for wanting to keep it in your pants. Well that shows how much she knows about you! If she knew only a tiny fragments of the things you had let Brian Kramer from high-school do to you, she’d choke on her own tongue.  
Somehow, your other friends get wind of it. Over the course of the day, each one of them tugs you aside and asks exactly what you plan to do with the mysterious stranger.  
Meulin seems to think you’ve got some kind of salubrious interest in him. Mituna can barely speak through the little giggles that keep jumping into his mouth in the place of words, so he ends up slack against you, just barely holding himself up as he gasps half-formed questions. Damara wraps her arm around your waist in a way that is both friendly and wildly suggestive and politely enquires as to the length and texture of Cronus’s dick, and what her chances at it look like to you.  
Horus is concerned about your well-being and wants to know if you’re alright, because the rumours Damara has passed along about your new neighbour are quite alarming, and also, if Rufioh asks if he came by, he never did and Rufioh needs to stop stalking him. Rufioh approaches you less than ten minutes later and asks the name of your new neighbour, as he heard it was either Kronos like the Greek Titan or Chris like the Pine, and once you have told him it is Cronus he nods distractedly and asks if Rus has by any chance been by and been trying to avoid him again. Aranea and Meenah both express concern that you have been single for far too long and demand that you date him immediately, and if he claims to be straight, that you dip him in a vat of rainbows and convert him. Finally, Porrim makes a grand entrance in your dorm room just as you are getting ready for bed.  
She catches you hunched over the bathroom sink with a toothbrush in your mouth and a towel around your neck.  
You squeak, spitting foam like a rabid man “Porrim! I’m indecent! Would you at least knock?”  
She eyes you sceptically, noting that only two of your shirt’s buttons are undone over your chest “What is this I hear about you and the boy next door?”  
At least she has the good sense to whisper.  
You can’t help but roll your eyes. Spitting, you rinse your mouth out and stifle a little burp before you can speak.  
“I can only imagine the hideous rumours you must have heard before you found me-”  
“No you can’t,” she retorts “Not with your pure little mind.”  
Again, your thoughts wander back to Brian Kramer and the back seat of his Toyota. Warmth spreads across your cheeks, threatening to collect in your crotch. As usual, you manage to douse this heat by building a vivid picture of one of your fatter aunts squeezed into a string bikini. The image of a morbidly obese woman oozing out of tissue-sized scraps of fabric combined with your memories of your aunt, who seems to fart as much as she talks, never fails to shrivel you up at the speed of light.  
Porrim pops herself down in your desk chair and rotates from side to side “I think you should divorce them all as friends, honestly. Send them back to the friendship pound. Let some other poor fool get taken in by the puppy-dog eyes and the sob stories.”  
“Oh, they’re just entertaining themselves. When was the last time we had an honest to goodness scandal within our friendship group?”  
She cocks an eyebrow “I thought you’d be outraged. People are talking shit about you behind your back, honey. If ever there was a time for righteous Kankri to step forward and avenge his good name, it is right fucking now.”  
“Language, please, you’re being very triggering.”  
Porrim grins “Sarcasm? Good lord, look at you. You’re learning. I knew Loz would be a terrible influence on you. Where is the little delinquent by the way?”  
Stretching your back, you go over to your bed and perch on the edge of it, aching for sleep “With Meulin, of course. They have a date in town.”  
Her expression softens somewhat “I remember our last scandal pretty well, sweetie. It was the time I went out with Damara. God, the sky almost fell in when we became an item, didn’t it?”  
“That was a year ago.”  
Porrim shrugs “But you remember the sky almost fell in, don’t you?”  
You nod. Much of your last year of high-school was spent agonising over Porrim’s apparent marriage to the devil. At the time, Damara’s reputation as the school’s ‘bicycle’ was more of a celebration than a slur. Against all the odds, she had managed to work her way through half of the cheerleading squads (most of which had been encouraged by their trysts and got proper girlfriends after the craters Damara had left in their hearts were healed), much of the football time, the entirety of the poetry society and even started an epidemic of the clap in the student theatre company, even though she herself had never once been infected with the clap.  
For at least two months of that year, you felt you kind of understood how your father must have felt when you edged out of the closet. Every time you saw Porrim with Damara hanging off her arms, and Damara was generally appreciating Porrim’s ample chest down one of her V-necks, you were possessed by an insane urge to sweep her off to church, or to a mosque, or just the nearest place of worship where the demon Damara wouldn’t be able to follow you. To make Porrim repent her sins and nullify her demonic marriage. The urge eventually passed as you discovered that for all her filthy talks and her chequered past concerning Rufioh and Horus (who are still feeling the after-shocks even now, in the first year of college), she was actually treating Porrim like a goddamned lady.  
This was one of your first little ‘oh’ moments, which combined into a massive epiphany somewhere around graduation day that made you realise you were kind of a self-righteous asshole and should probably dial back the trigger-talk.  
“Kanny, I’m just gonna ask, ok?” she takes a deep breath, steeling herself “Do you like him?”  
“I’m not sure.” you reply honestly.  
A glint of hope lights her eyes up “Maybe then?”  
“Porrim, we met yesterday.”  
She flaps her hand in front of her face, as if clearing away a foul smell “Sweetie, I wouldn’t mind if you dated King fucking Kong if it stopped you from mooning over Latula for fifteen minutes.”  
You bite your bottom lip, thinking.  
It is possible?  
You haven’t felt anything like that glow this morning since….since ever, you think. You haven’t felt like there was even the slimmest ray of hope on your romantic life for the last two years, ever since it occurred to you that Latula is possibly the most wonderful and engaging person currently on the face of the earth.  
It seems an impossible weight to escape, the weight of your embarrassing crush.  
But hey, if Porrim and Damara can get together and stay together for as long as they have, despite Porrim’s dress choices and Damara’s innate desire to fuck everything that moves, then maybe you can wriggle out of this.  
Maybe you can make something out of the boy next door.


	5. Before the tides change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick explainer to be explained  
> The names of the Ancestors come from their titles  
> So 'Graa'ant' came from the 'Grand' in Grand Highblood. Hakuna came from the fact that I realised i could say 'Hakuna Makara' if I added it.  
> The other name I've mentioned, Lezlee, that's derived from the 'less' part of 'Signless'  
> Other names that will be dropped with reference to the parents include Reggie (Redglare), Suu'unnman (Summoner), Rosa (Dolorosa, shock horror, plot twist), Nettie (Spinerette Mindfang) Cary (Dualscar, and somehow I got 'Cary' out of that 'car' smacked onto the end of his name), Psiimon (Psiionic), Connie /Nymph (The Condense) and finally Lee (Darkleer).  
> That is all. Continue.

Your name is Cronus Vantas.   
You took his name when you decided to take his hand in marriage, because it seemed like the smart thing to do. Once you were gonna do this dry-land thing, you were gonna do it all the way and the Atlantican name had to go. Actually, it felt good, like taking off a heavy coat you had been forced to wear in hot weather. And it made everything else feel real, to call yourself by the half of the name that you had been muttering under your breath for about three or four years. Real was exactly what you needed after what you’d been through.  
You try not to think about it. It’s not that the whole mess you lived through in college traumatised you beyond thoughts or words- what damage it did is being slowly soothed away, and oh the advantages of being married to a psychologist are innumerable- you just have better things to worry about.   
Like that rubber tide coming in tonight.   
You wake up around eight thirty in the evening. For a few confused seconds, you paw at the other side of the bed for Kankri and trying to figure out what time it is. When you catch sight of your watch on the nightstand, reality clicks back into place. The dog is curled up on your feet and tucked into a blanket. Realising that you are awake, she edges up your body to lick your face.  
The dog’s name is still undecided. She has been in the house for a year now. You and Kankri decided that you were one day probably going to have children, and that it would be good practice to have something that needed regular feeding and exercise around. You were the one who picked her out. Officially, you and Kankri were going to go to the pound later that week and have a proper look. You just happened to walk into a pet store to ask the staff about friendly breeds, passed her cage, and feel in love with a single glance.  
She’s proved a wonderful pet, but she still has to answer to a whistle. Kankri doesn’t believe in naming pets. He calls it frivolous and presumptuous, considering they probably have their own names in their own languages. You’ve given up on trying to convince him that dogs don’t have a culture (if you had a whale instead of a dog, you’d have to agree, but it’s a freaking dog) and have resorted to just calling her ‘girl’, whistling, or clapping your hands to summon her. The guests that ask her name are told you’re in the process of deciding.  
Karkat’s friend Sollux, who’s in and out of the house almost as much as Gamzee, calls her the Nameless One and tells you you’ll both be terrible parents.  
“Rubber tide,” you tell her “Rubber tide, Girl. Don’t go swimmin’ for the next week, or beach-combin’. Yer liable to get yer paws stung silly.”  
Hearing the familiar command term, she offers you her front paw for a shake. You laugh and shake her paw, the gently shoo her off your chest so you can get up.   
You go to the window and open the blinds. Dusk has begun to fall, dying the water red with a sunset. Cracking the window open, you breathe in the scents of the salt and the sea. Because you were born and raised in the sea, you can even smell the tide of animals that are about to wash in. Your eyes pick out a line of glossy shapes about a half mile distant. The waves do not break that far out, so the jellyfish are having a relatively smooth ride. That’s going to change in the surf, though. The waves still reach far up on the sand and crash in the surf and rush through the shallows.  
You expect about a tonne’s worth of jellyfish will be dumped on the beach tonight.  
“Cronus?”  
“I’m up!”  
The dog jumps up at scuttles downstairs at the sound of Kankri’s voice.  
You want to stand in front of the window for a while and contemplate the meaning of life and all that good shit, but soon you’re following the dog. You actually get there before her, throwing your arms around Kankri’s waist. He’s picked up and danced around the living room a few times, then tossed onto the couch and smothered in a kiss on the top of his nose. Caught between a laugh and a cry of protest, Kankri threads his arm around your shoulders and pulls you close to him.  
“Good day at work?”  
His face clouds briefly, but he shakes it off. Whatever that was, he’ll want to talk about it later.  
“Interesting, to say the least. Did you sleep well?”  
You shrug “Feel a little stuffed with sleep. I’m gonna need to stay up for, like, two days, to get my body clock back in order.”  
The dog charges back into the room with a sock in her mouth. The excitement is far too much for her to handle. She leaps onto the couch and tries to squirm in between you. When this fails, she drops the sock and runs off into the kitchen, intending to play by herself.   
“You should take her down to the beach,” suggests Kankri “She needs some exercise.”  
The dog sprints through the view of the window, across the lawn and to the hole where she keeps her best bones.  
“She’ll get stung,” you retort “Rubber tide, honey. What if she tries to eat the specimens?”  
Kankri thinks it over for a moment “What if I come with? Or rather, what if I just happen to be walking the dog at the moment that you happen to be working? And I pass you a maximum of once?”  
You give him a sceptical look, noting the bags under his eyes “You need sleep.”  
“And I’ll get sleep. The weekend starts tomorrow.” he shucks you under the chin “I’m a big boy, Cronus. I can put myself to bed.”  
This is just too good to pass up. You have to think quickly and kind of grasp at straws for this one, but you’re proud of it enough when the stupid line comes out: “Yeah, but you like it better when I put you to bed, right?”  
“You are disgusting.”  
He kisses your chin and you respond by kissing his neck. It quickly devolves into some kind of competition to see who can get the most pecks in before the other rallies and fights back. You have to say, victory is easily yours. Kankri is pressed back into the depths of the couch and kissed into a helpless, melting stupor. You tend to get a little giddy and grabby when you’re reminded of the fate you have so narrowly ducked.   
You’re tempted to follow through, and you can tell he’s ready for it. But they’re going to need you on the beach in less than an hour. There’s no way the two of you will be done with each other by that time. Deciding it would be cruel to tease him, you pull away from him. Kankri makes a noise of protest that is caught between a needy whimper and a grunt of irritation.  
You straighten up and hop of the couch, making for the kitchen “Sorry, babe. They need me on the beach.”  
“I’m sure your presence on the beach is far less imperative than your presence on this couch, right now.” he retorts.  
You grin at him “Down boy. I’ll play with you later.”  
He tosses a couch cushion at you, which you catch easily “Is that a solemn promise?”  
You hold the cushion over your heart, like one of those Southern gentlemen from the black-and-white movies holding his hat over his chest “Of course. Have I ever lead you to believe you were going to get into my pants, then not let you into my pants?”  
Kankri shrugs “Not lately. Are you hungry?”  
“Pardon me, but you’re the hungry one right now, not to mention the thirsty one.”  
“Not for cock, Cronus, for food.”  
You can’t help but burst out laughing as he brushes past you to the fridge and displays the variety of left-overs there with a theatrical flare and a ‘ta-daaa’. When you met him, Kankri was still fanning himself at any casual reference towards sex. He used to love to make a show of being offended. Since your college years, he’s had a couple small epiphanies that have led to him being all-round less of a nosy asshole. Of course, he still thinks talking dirty is inappropriate, immature and altogether unwholesome, but now he doesn’t let it stop him in the perimeter of the bedroom.  
Or the couch, more recently.  
You’re not sure how you’re going to be able to keep your hands off him when his family is here, but you’ll have to find a way. Even when he’s trying to be quiet, Kankri’s like a fog horn crossed with an air-raid siren.  
“I could use a little somethin’ before I go.”  
Kankri furrows his brow “Now I’m not sure if you’re talking about a blow job or a snack.”  
“Actual food, Kanny, not sexy times. We’ll save the sexy times for later, as promised.”  
Kankri throws together a quick snack, even though you tell him you’ll do it yourself. That weight that you saw troubling him earlier is back in his eyes, making his movements slow and laborious. Eventually you sidle over to the kitchen counter and slip an arm around his shoulders. While he chops an apple into thirds, you cup your hand over his on the handle and ease it out of his hands. You take over for him, letting him stay there in your arms to be cradled until he’s ready to come out with it.  
In the distance, the sea shimmers under the starlight and the moonlight. Kankri watches the rough waves breaking on the surf. Only you can see the trails of glowing energy that swirl and pound in the troughs and crests of the waves. Your father used to tell you it was just plain old magic, seeped out of magicians that were so strong they sweated it. In your teenage years, you learned it was just a special type of plankton that threw off phosphorescence. The wavelength of the light is not the same, so Kankri has no way of observing the plankton when you point out a faint glow in the distance, or even if the entire shore is burning with it. He takes your word for it.  
“I found out something strange about Graa’ant today.”  
Your mind immediately jumps to the weedy cashier that’s always on the night shift and the gas station “Is he a nut case?”  
“We already knew that.”  
“Are we talkin’ ‘bout Graa’ant with the three inexplicable ‘a’s or Grant from the gas station who hates everyone?”  
“Graa’ant.”  
Dread knots in your stomach. What could be wrong with Graa’ant? Ok, so considering his job he’s going to see some messed up things, but your town is not known for its grisly murders. He’s more accustomed to dealing with drunken joyriders and domestics than dead bodies, apart from the occasional ‘floater’; a corpse of a drowned fisherman or drunk that fell off a dock.  
Besides, Graa’ant is famous in the town for being made of something so tough it can’t even be compared to an earthly metal such as steel. What the hell could mess with his head?   
If only to bring a little smile to Kankri’s lips, you keep playing dumb “You’re sure you mean Graa’ant Hakuna Makara, right?”  
“Yes! Police Chief Graa’ant Hakuna Makara. There are only two Grant’s in this town. Which one do you think I’d be talking about? The one we know and regularly interact with, or the one that takes our cash in the gas station and tells us to have a good day like he really means he wants us to drive our gay asses off a cliff?”  
“Well I don’t know. Maybe the evil gas Grant has a severe psychological problem that he just revealed to you.”  
Kankri tilts his head up and fixes you with his ‘really, Cronus?’ look “Of course he has a severe problem. A towering inferiority complex that leads him to lash out prematurely at anyone he thinks might even begin to reject any aspect of his personality. Anyone could tell you that. I’m talking about our good friend Graa’ant. The father of our practice son.”  
Your unease grows, but your smile stays in place. The knife moves mechanically.  
“Is he alright?”  
Kankri nods “Healthy as ever. Gamzee came to me with some strange news, however. It would seem that Graa’ant is not his father.”  
Confusion and relief wash over you at the same time, making you dizzy “Gamzee’s adopted? Shit! I never woulda guessed. They have the same nose and eyes and everything.”  
“No, they belong to the same biological family…but Gamzee is his uncle, not his son.”  
“Run that one by me again.”  
So Kankri explains. Your head spins. It’s a good thing your arms are around Kankri, or you might have actually fallen over as Kankri gets into the nonsense about the party-hard grandfather and the scandalous babies. By the time he’s finished, the knife is buried in the chopping board and your mouth is hanging open.  
Kankri sighs, rubbing his eyes “I don’t know that Graa’ant was right in telling Gamzee that. Perhaps it was his responsibility, but he could have at least waited until he was in a more stable position…so, how much longer do you have before you have to go? Cronus? Close your mouth dear, something unpleasant might fly in there.”  
He pops an apple slice in your mouth.   
“You know,” you talk around the slice “Something exactly like that happened in the court when I was little, except there was a lot more sex and murder involved. Did I ever tell you how we got Eridan?”  
Kankri makes a visible effort not to sigh “Plenty of times.”  
You’ve told him about a million times. You gush about Eridan- funny, since you kinda hated him when you were free to see him. He managed to epitomise the perfect royal and the most perfectly annoying little brother at the same time, and thusly he earned college-Cronus’s complete scorn.  
Kankri has been told time and time again how you used to avoid him at all costs. Whenever you were forced to be around him, you’d tease him mercilessly. In fact, you may have planted one or two of the seeds of his many complexes during his early childhood, when you frequently told him that he was not in fact a cousin salvaged from an abusive uncle (which he really was), but one of your boogers that had been stolen by a mad scientist and used to clone the ultimate evil twin.  
He believed you up until he turned twelve, at which point he removed certain parts of his head from his ass and saw through some of your bullshit. Some of his own bullshit too, but he wouldn’t admit to it or act on it for another few years.  
You think. You haven’t seen him since he was thirteen. You sort of emancipated yourself from the family via a dramatic abdication of your right to inherit the throne of Atlantis and the sea overall, and you didn’t even think about missing Eridan during that process.  
All you can do now is speculate and gush about the toddler, the kid and the pre-teen you knew him as.  
Your eyes drift towards the ocean again. One of these days, your wish to see him silhouetted in the glow of the plankton is going to come true. You just know it.  
You lean your head on Kankri’s shoulder “He was the meanest little shit of a kid I ever met. One time he actually whined his way out of a hostage situation.”  
Kankri smiles. This story is one of his favourites.  
“One of the pissed off ladies of the court,” you start.  
“The one with the expansive sea horse ranches and the land that stretched across the sea floors,” adds Kankri “And she always wore this elaborate headpiece with a dead fish poking out of the top that made you laugh.”  
“She wanted her daughter to marry into the family, but there wasn’t much chance of that happening since me and Eri already had our mates picked out for us.”  
“Meenah would have whored you out to the entire court to swell her trust fund.” says Kankri “And Feferi was determined to marry a giant squid to make peace between your race and their race.”  
“Jeez babe, just stop me if you’ve heard this one before.”  
He shakes his head, filling his mouth with apple, and gestures for you to continue.  
“So this woman, being the genius she is, decides that she can pull a sorta Mer-Shakespeare on us, some Romeo and Juliette shit, star-crossed lovers shit.”  
“I still cannot believe your people have a Shakespeare.” mutters Kankri.  
You stuff another slice of apple in his mouth before he can get started on his well-worn ramble about the wondrous cultural coincidences between this world and your birth world “She figured if she gets Eri ta fall in love with her kid, then Eri will kick up such a fuss the court will be forced ta let him marry her instead. What’s her first move? Not a series of cleverly executed ploys ta get them together, like play-dates or parties where they’ll have ta hang around together or clever shit like that. She straight up hi-jacks Eridan. For two days we’ve got no idea where he is. Pa’s scourin’ the kingdom on a personal warpath, swinging Ahab’s crosshairs about, ready to shoot anythin’ that looks at him funny. The kingdom’s lookin’ with one eye and usin’ the other ta prepare for the mournin’ processions. Then two days later Eri get sent back.”  
Kankri laughs. Probably because you’re tickling his sides to emphasise how fucking hysterical this turn of events. God, sometimes you forget how scrawny he is. At least his ribs don’t stand out like they did in college, back when he looked kinda like Peter Parker in the pre-bite era.  
“Ok, now you can tell me the rest of the story.”  
Gasping, Kankri scrabbles at your hands, helpless to stop your onslaught “Sh-she gave him b-back, stoppitstoppitstoppit…because he was s-s-s-sooo annoying…he didn’t stop c-com-complaining the ent-entire time he was there-”  
He breaks off into a yelp of laughter as you poke him in the side, just above his hip. Were this the sexual situation it could be (if not for the unfortunate reality of your working life), that would have ensured an instant orgasm.  
Satisfied that you’ve tormented him enough, you spin him around and kiss him on the tip of his nose.  
“Don’t stay up waitin’ for me.”  
He nods “I promise I’ll go straight to bed after I walk the dog, on one condition.”  
“Oh yeah?”  
He says this next part with a straight face. If it were you, you wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to do something ridiculous with your eyebrows or purr at him “We have some unfinished business. I fully expect to be woken up to finish that business.”  
“Yes sir.”  
It’s going to be hard to stay focussed on your work when you know what’s waiting for you at home.

Cronus: be college Cronus=====>  
College Cronus: abort fucking mission========>

Your name is Cronus Ampora.  
You’re dead first in line for the throne of Atlantis and have had to kill no one to claim that right. Ok, so you’ve killed scores of people to protect your birth-right, but that’s more like self-defence, and that shit is totally justifiable.  
It’s day two of your mission to explore the human culture and identify the ideal points of invasion, and your shit is already wrecked. That guy next-door has done something to your chest. He’s strolled up and effectively punched his little, pen-calloused hand through your rib-cage, pinched your pusher and run off cackling with the still-beating lump of meat leaving a trail of blood behind him.  
How come nobody thought to warn you about this kind of stuff in the years of orientation and training you underwent to set foot on the dirt? Seriously, nobody was creative enough to think of love at first sight, even though they were smart enough to come up with those wave tattoos to keep your tailed sealed into your body?  
When you get back to Atlantis, you’re gonna fire some people.  
But first, for your mission to have a hope in hell of success, you’re gonna hafta do something about that neighbour-guy.  
You’ll have to kill Kankri Vantas inside the month.


	6. Return of the Little Mermaid: Blood in the water (coming soon to a theater near you)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit gets serious.  
> And confusing.  
> And over-wrought.

Your name is Sollux Captor.  
His name is Eridan Ampora. Looking at him, you’re not having a hard time remembering why you were in love with him. Why a bit of you, a bit that’s not actually that small, has stayed in love with him against all the odds. Why you’ve clung to this desperate hope at the back of your head that he would come back. And even then, assuming that when he came back that he would want to be with you still, although he only knew you as a child and had no reason to think that you would want to stay loyal to him.  
What kind of nutcase stays loyal to a mermaid they met when they were nine years old and only knew for one summer? What kind of nutcase BELIEVES they met a mermaid (merman? Merperson?) when they were nine years old during the summer their mother finally swallowed enough pills to finish herself off? Most people would have shipped themselves off to therapy if they had memories like that drifting around in their already tormented brain.  
Then again, most people have never met a merperson, to the extent of your knowledge. You might even be setting up the appropriate model of what people ‘should do’ or ‘would do’ in this kind of totally improbable situation.  
“Ya plannin’ on w-words sometime soon, Sol?”  
He still has that adorable stutter on his ‘w’s that he had when you were kids. God, you’re actually so glad that one little thing stuck with him.  
Rather than speaking to him, you reach over very carefully and cup his face in your hands. He starts back slightly in alarm, thinking you’re about to kiss him. You squish his cold cheeks together once or twice, then feel his chin and his forehead.  
You cannot believe he is real. The freckled flesh under your hands is there, not imagined. It is real. He is real. He is here, in front of you, on your beach, in your cove.  
“I’m real, Sol,” he manages through his squished up mouth “Ya can stop doin’ that now-w.”  
“Holy…are you sure you’re here?”  
He rolls his eyes and presses the back of his hand to your face. He strokes your jaw and runs his thumb along the length of the side of your face. Plucking your glasses off, he rests them in the sand to the side and pulls you closer to him. He’s hypnotising, this close up. Automatically, you begin to count his freckles. The smell of salt clings to his skin. Small beads of crystalline water roll down his body every time he moves. His wet hair manages to look fluffy somehow, and covered with frost where the sunlight glances off the drops of water caught there.  
Never in a hundred years of dreams and longing could you have imagined he would grow up to be so beautiful.  
Eridan presses your forehead to his and inhales deeply.  
“You smell like coffee.” he notes.  
This must be the first time he has smelled coffee in almost ten years. You’re kind of impressed he remembers that particular scent.  
“I didn’t mean to run.” you mutter, suddenly guilty “I just…I thought I was seeing a ghost.”  
“I’m not a ghost,” he assures you “Not yet, anyw-way.”  
Eridan pulls you closer, pressing you into his slick, bare chest. The rest of the world drains away into the back-ground noise of the waves’ rush and the seagull’s cry. The heat of the sun is barely there, on your skin, compared to how keenly you can feel Eridan.  
“Miss me?” he asks.  
“Are you seriously going to beg for attention right now?”  
He smiles against your neck “You’re still lispin’.”  
You’re suddenly, fiercely conscious of being a scrawny, gangly, lisping nerd with bad hair and mis-matching eyes and only one ex-girlfriend who only dated you out of a misguided pity in the first place. You move to pull back, but Eridan isn’t having any of that. He keeps you close to him, resting his head in the curve of your neck.  
“I missed you. I had all this shit I was gonna say w-when I saw-w ya on the beach, but ya sorta…high-tailed it the fuck outta there an’ stuff. It’s all gone back dow-wn now-w.”  
“What were you doing out there?”  
He shrugs “Lookin’ fer ya. I nev-ver thought I w-was gonna find ya.”  
Last night, you took a walk on the beach.  
The urge just sprang up inside you for no real reason- now, you suspect it was either some kind of divine intervention, a brilliant stroke of luck, or some kind of gut instinct that led you down to the beach. At the time, you tried not to think much of it and indulged the urge. When you were missing Eridan worse than normal, you took to the beach to remind yourself of the summer you had together. This summer, the walks have been dangerously close to establishing themselves as a part of your routine, right along-side anime binges and weekends without sleep.  
It was close to dusk. Your father barely looked up as you left the house, and you confirmed that he wasn’t paying attention to you by telling him that you were off to a naked prison rave as you shut the door behind you. As is the custom on these walks, you thoughts stayed solidly on Eridan. All the way through the darkening town, his name was on your lips. His face, seared behind your eyelids, and you tried to imagine him at your age. Perhaps already settled on the throne that finally forced him to leave you that summer? He is easy to accept as a king or a prince, especially now that you have seen him.  
You had the beach to yourself, which is the way you prefer it. Being around other people brings with it the risk of having to communicate. You’re a shut-in for a reason; because you’re a hideous nerd and the world is full of conceited jerks and boring weirdoes. For a while, you paced up and down a well-beaten stretch of beach. Despite your longings, you weren’t heading for the cove. You took the opposite direction and eventually stopped at a trail of black rocks that run into the ocean, most of which were submerged in the high tide.  
Picking a flat rock, you sat there and watched the sun set over the water. In the back of your mind, you searched for an appropriate metaphor to describe it. Since there was no one else around, you started to mutter them under your breath.  
“God kicked a can of red paint over.” you said.  
“Looks more like blood to me.”  
You flinched, your skin already scalding with embarrassment. But as you looked around, you found you couldn’t locate the source of the voice. That was, until a hand reached up from the dark water and tugged on the sleeves of your jeans.  
“Dow-wn here.”  
You looked down and saw Eridan’ face peering up at you, like a drowned corpse that was finally floating to the surface. You ran. Faster than you knew you could. In less than fifteen minutes, you were leaning against the door of your bedroom, breathing through what felt like a bundle of needles inside your chest.  
Because it was easier, you decided you were going crazy. After all, you had just lost a brother. Before that, you were dealing with the grief of losing a mother and having a father who had pretty much given up on you. He had better things to do than to raise his son. Something like that. The stress that you dealt with daily- the dread you felt every morning as you opened your eyes, simply from the realisation that you were about to spend another day trudging through your shitty life…  
How can that not get to a person?  
You rationalised it so thoroughly that by the time you retreated to bed, you convinced yourself that Eridan was a figment of your over-worked mind. You would definitely not be going back to the beach, let alone the cove in hopes of finding him.  
It’s a goddamned good thing you never listen to your own advice.  
“Listen, Sol…there’s a lotta stuff you need ta know. Like, right fuckin’ now-w.”  
He holds you at arm’s length, his expression dark, filled with fear and regret. Your stomach twists itself into knots. What’s gone wrong? If he tells you he has to go back soon, you might flip your shit. You might go psycho on him. This has the potential to turn into a Misery-style mess if you don’t manage to keep your shit together. Honestly, the prospect of drowning sounds a lot better than letting Eridan go again.  
For his sake, you pretend it’s ok “What’s wrong?”  
He shrugs “I don’t know-w w-where to start. I don’t think I can get through it all…just, first, let me just get this outta the w-way. I didn’t come back here for ya.”  
“Oh.”  
“I didn’t know-w if ya still lived here…they didn’t let me check up on ya. I know-w I said I w-would, but…ya know-w, it’s not a real excuse or anythin’. I w-was too scared to do w-what I said I’d do and God only know-ws how-w bad it’s been for ya, ‘cos I know-w it’s been all kinds ‘a hell for me. I’m not ev-ven supposed to be here.”  
Eridan squeezes your arms, trying to make you understand.  
Of course it would be all kinds of stupid to think that he came back specifically for you. If he couldn’t be bothered- wasn’t allowed to, apparently- to check up on you the way he told you he would once in the past decade, it’s silly to think he suddenly got the urge to defy all of that. He’s here on official royal business or some shit like that.  
“Why now?”  
“Aw, Sol don’t look at me like that. I promise I didn’t w-want to not see you. I just couldn’t.”  
“I get it,” you say bitterly “It’s fine.”  
His face crumples, and his eyes grow wet, but he keeps himself under control. It’s now that you realise just how scared Eridan is. His entire body is trembling so slightly you thought it was just his pulse fluttering against your chest.  
“Eridan, tell me. It’s alright. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”  
“Oh fuck,” he hides his face in your neck “It’s all gone to shit, Sol. Everythin’s gone to shit…the Sea W-witch is back.”  
At the mention of the name, the waves seem to fall a little more roughly onto the sand. The smell of salt grows thicker, the foam heavier so that it sinks into the waves like wet cotton. Birds overhead pause in their cries for what has to be at least five seconds, then resume again, as if they never let off.  
You shiver yourself, although you’re not sure what has scared you.  
Eridan told you about his world. It was such a long time ago that you have lost most of it in your confused memories. The Sea Witch could be his fucking aunt for all you know.  
“What does that mean?” you ask sheepishly.  
He takes a few deep breaths before he can answer “It means I gotta hide.”  
“Here?”  
“Yeah…see…I didn’t know-w if you w-were still here, but I know-w that my brother is.”  
“Your brother?”  
“Shit, I’m blowin’ his cover.”  
Eridan wipes his eyes with the heel of his hand. His manner changes from one of a cringing, fearful animal to that stubborn determination you expect of him. Straightening up, Eridan twists a crick out of his back.  
“Cronus.”  
“Cronus?” you repeat.  
It takes a moment to sink in.  
“Cronus?! Cronus Vantas?”  
“Cronus Vantas?” repeats Eridan in shock “He’s married?”  
“To Kankri!”  
“That human tart?”  
“Hey,w-watch it! They’re pretty much raising me right now!”  
Eridan grabs your arm again “Wait a second, you’re tellin’ me ya know-w w-where Cronus is right now-w?”  
You nod “He’s probably at his house right now. He told me he was doing some work on the beach tonight, when the sun went down.”  
Eridan bites his lip “The rubber tide. Shit, I’v-ve got to get ta him before he goes down ta that!”  
“Why? Eridan, what’s going on?”  
He presses his fingers to his temples “Oh God, how do I explain this to ya…ok, so ya know-w my father?”  
“Not personally.”  
“Sol!”  
“I’m taking it seriously!”  
“Listen, my father has the throne because he ousted the tyrant that was on it before him. Like two years before you an’ me were born, there w-were these horrible storms, ya know? Ask your dad about it, I’m sure he remembers. They were a w-world-w-wide problem. That was my dad an’ the old Queen fightin’ it out. She w-was horrible. She had this thing called the hemospectrum- nev-ver mind, I’ll tell ya that shit later. Long story short, she was a monster an’ Pa kicked her the fuck outta the kingdom. He let her daughters stay though, ‘cos they were basically innocent. Ya followin’?”  
Your head is spinning “Evil Sea Witch. Kingly dad. Coups.”  
Eridan nods “Good enough. Anyw-way, my Pa had all this support ‘cos he’s this military big-shot so they inaugurated him right the fuck aw-way, so me an’ Cro were princes of the realm. Ya get it? W-we stand to inherit a shit-ton. An’ just ta make nice with Fef and Meenah, the Sea W-witch’s daughters, he fixes it up so that I’m due to marry the younger one and Cro’s stuck w-with the older one.”  
“You have a fiancée?”  
“Sol.”  
“Sorry. I mean, this is a lot to take in.”  
“I know-w, I know-w. I’m sorry. Just bear w-with, yeah?”  
He darts forward and kisses you on the cheek. The effect would be the same if you had grabbed a fistful of live wire and bit down on electric eel at the same time. Frankly, you’re surprised your hair is still lying flat.  
You decide you don’t care if Eridan is married with two kids right now. As long as he promises to do that again, and maybe get your mouth this time, you’d be cool with that. You doubt you’d put up a struggle right now if a shark burst out of the water and clamped down on your legs.  
Eridan has to snap his fingers under your nose several times before you’re back in touch with reality and ready to listen again.  
“Ya said that Cronus is married now, yeah?”  
You nod “For four years or something. I’ve known Kankri for longer. Remember Karkat?”  
Eridan’s face does this weird twitch where he tries to grin and grimace at the same time “Ya don’t forget somebody like Karkat.”  
“He’s his big brother. Cronus and Kankri are like the First Lady and the President in this town…they’re so nice. Cro’s a marine biologist. He saves wounded turtles and shit. And Kankri’s been keeping the town sane. He’s Gamzee’s psychiatrist, for fuck’s sake, and you’re telling me he’s married to a mermaid?”  
“No, you’re tellin’ me he’s married to a human!” Eridan puts his face in his hands “Shit…w-well, that’s ok I guess. So…so you guys don’t find him wanderin’ around the beach lookin’ like he’s been shot in the face a lot, do ya? He’s not loopy?”  
“Picture of mental health! I mean, he talks to the fish like they’re people-”  
“A course they’re people!” snaps Eridan “God, this is so w-weird. Does…does he ever talk about havin’ a brother?”  
You shake your head “Not to me. I mean, he likes having me around a lot. Gamzee’s their practice son, but I’m more like somebody’s kid brother or cousin…he’s been using me as an Eridan replacement, hasn’t he?”  
Eridan shakes his head, showering you with drops of salt water “It doesn’t matter right now. Long story short, again, the Sea W-witch is un-banished. Not by our choice, a course. Her daughter Meenah did it. She w-was pissed about losin’ power, I guess, since she w-was supposed ta be the new-w Queen once Cro took pow-wer from Pa, but then Cro died- FUCK THAT!”  
The outburst makes you flinch backwards, but Eridan’s anger is not directed at you. He punches the sand and grits his teeth, growling at the back of his throat.  
“I thought he w-was dead until last w-week! Pa springs it on me all ‘a sudden that Cro ain’t dead, that he liv-ves here an’ that I gotta hide here until he comes ta get me…he’s fightin’ a w-war dow-wn there, an’ the v-very first thing he does is throw-w me aw-way. He thinks I’m useless.”  
Possessed by the need to comfort him, you gather Eridan into your chest and hug him tight.  
“He just wants you to be safe. That’s why he sent you to Cronus.”  
Eridan sighs “He told me Cro was dead for years, an’ now-w he’s throwin’ me ta Cronus…better’n bein’ dead I guess.”  
“So…so you want me to take you to Cronus?”  
Eridan shakes his head “Not like this. Listen, does Cro let people see his legs?”  
“Uh, yeah.”  
Eridan traces a finger from your ankle to the top of your thigh, his face turning a faint shade of purple as he does “Does he hav-ve a scar here? On both legs, probably.”  
It takes a moment to find your voice, and when you do, even then you can only croak weakly “Yeah. He- he said he fell off a tree onto a fence when he was a kid. He said they’re stitches.”  
“He’s a fuckin’ liar. Those are scars from w-when his tail split.”  
He opens his hands and shows you a small phial that looks to be made of some kind of black, volcanic rock. You decide it’s not a good idea to ask where he had been keeping that.  
“It’s like the ‘Little Mermaid’. Remember the story ya told me about?”  
You frown “The one where she dies horribly and unloved in the end, or the Disney version?”  
For the first time in a long time, Eridan cracks a smile “Nice, Sol. Be a little more negativ-ve next time, ok? I ain’t scared enough yet.”  
He tries to pull the cork out of the top, but his hands are shaking so badly they slip every time. Reaching around him, you pull the cork away and steady his hands with yours so he doesn’t spill a drop. With the cork gone, a sweet, salty smell is released.  
“This will give you legs?”  
“Yeah. It ain’t gonna be pleasant. For the first tw-wo days, I ain’t gonna be able to walk a step.”  
You squeeze his hand “I’ll be there.”  
“Ya don’t hav-ve ta-”  
“Shut up. I’ll be there.”  
“Sol, ya don’t know-w w-what you’re gettin’ into.”  
Summoning your courage, you kiss him on the bridge of his freckled nose “Well I’m willing to get into whatever I have to get into to make sure you’re safe.”  
Eridan can present no argument to that. He begins to wriggle away from you, preparing to change himself.  
“This isn’t permanent, is it?”  
Eridan shakes his head “The change can only be permanent if you’ve got someone ta attach yourself ta on the land. Only if you’re making a promise ta stay with them…otherwise, ya gotta take a new dose ev-very w-week. I don’t think Pa’s countin’ on me fallin’ in love up here.”  
For some reason, hearing that is like having a barbed wire twisted into your chest.  
You don’t want to think about it, but you can’t stop yourself…there are bigger things to worry about, but does he not love you, at least a little bit. There’s apparently a globally powerful sea-demon that wants to kill him, but does he not know that you love him, or does he just not want to know?  
Do you love him?  
“Is it going to hurt?”  
He nods “A fuck-ton. Give me some space, otherwise I’m gonna end up kickin’ ya. Oh, an’ in case I can’t talk later on…I’m not sure how bad this is gonna get me…just tell Cro that the w-water is poisonous tonight. Ev-veryw-where is poisonous. Sol, ya need ta get us aw-way from the w-water.”  
Your heart sinks “Should I tell someone?”  
Eridan shakes his head “No one will believ-ve ya, will they? Only Cro.”  
At this point, you’re not even sure what Eridan’s trying to tell you about the water. You’ll worry about it later.  
Eridan slips back into the water. Just in case you need to grab him if he passes out immediately, he makes sure to stay within arm’s reach. He lifts the phial to his lips, then stops.  
“I’m really happy ta see ya again.”  
“Me too.”  
Eridan tilts the phial back and downs the contents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introducing sexually awkward teenage couple #1. Stand back. This is going to be messy and embarrassing.  
> Just a quick editing note here: we're probably not going to get any POVs from the college Kankri and Cronus in chapters with Eridan or Sol's point of view, because it just makes more sense from a story telling perspective. Sorta. Also, I don't have the time to write that much for every chapter I do, which sucks.


	7. Either she's a witch, or there's something wrong with the water

Your name is Cronus Vantas and you wish you had stayed home tonight.  
Ok, only sorta. You love the ocean. You love being so close to the shores that you can hear the sound of the waves wherever you are, if you just find a quiet spot and really listen. The touch of salty water on your skin is almost better than any lover’s caress. Sometimes, you almost feel whole again. There is a gap inside you that Kankri cannot fill- it is not his responsibility to fill it, and anyway, no shape he could ever take would fit the gap snugly.  
However… on the beach, your old home seems so close it is unnerving, and you can’t help but picture your father or brother rolling up onto the sand with a legion of Threshsecutioners in the surf to drag you down and pop you back on the throne. They would have by now if they knew where you are.  
But they don’t, which is good. Still, you can’t quite feel safe without the reminder of your life up here holding your hand, his ring clinking against yours.   
“I see them.” says one of your colleagues.  
There are about ten of you down here. About five of them are stationed up at the labs on the hill on the other side of the town. While they are only here on a temporary placement (your has become something of an ecological wonder, what with the pollution near nil and the added, secret bonus of a mer moving in), the other five, including you, are all locals. You and two others are what they call ‘new blood’ in the town, meaning that you didn’t attend elementary school and up here.  
Cherry Jones (her actual name, not a stripper name as you first thought) and Sayyid Ahktar were both born and raised here, but they still defer to your expertise about this particular stretch of beach.  
You live here, therefore you are the Beach-master. There are a couple of doodles floating around the office depicting you with your face doodled on the massive body of an alpha male walrus surrounded by swooning walrus- bitches. Somebody has recently gone around and drawn a moustache on a few, mixing up the genders. Kankri has one of the photo-copied doodles pinned up on the fridge and giggles like an idiot every time he opens the fridge.  
“That’s foam on the water.” Sayyid has taken the binoculars from the intern who spoke “A lot of foam. It’s hitting a jetty of rock out there.”  
The intern flushes red. He’s some kid from Canada, still so green in this career you wonder if he has to photosynthesise. His name is either Bert or Bob. You haven’t got much of a head for names. It took you a week to memorise Sayyid’s and Cherry’s, and even then you had to write them on your hand.  
Cherry is not satisfied by Sayyid’s judgement. She never is. The two of them have been on-and-off since high-school, which must be absolutely exhausting. You know it can make the workplace hell when they’re not willing to get along with each other. She reaches out to you and beckons for the binoculars. You hand it over without complaint. Cherry is dangerous when she’s pissed off.  
“No, that’s not foam. That is a jellyfish.”  
“The jellies we want are blue.” He retorts “And not bioluminescent. How on earth are you supposed to see dark blue jellies in the water at this time of night?”  
“Why don’t you swim out and check then, dear? The screams of agony will prove you wrong, I’m sure, when you run into those tentacles.”  
The others who were near to them have the good sense to back away. Sayyid and Cherry are completely oblivious, in their own little world where it is only the two of them and the single, filthy glare they exchange. One of the other interns (Karen? Kambili? Wait, no, Kambili is the woman at State Farm) sidles up to you with a box of equipment under an arm.  
“Are they gonna be ok to work?” she asks nervously.  
“If they come to blows, I’ll stick ‘em in time-out.” you promise.  
Despite Cherry and Sayyid’s fresh argument, the work goes fast. In no time at all the equipment is ready, the lights are up and one of the guys you actually know has an electric lantern mounted on a rock. The beam is too dim to drown out any phosphorescence they might see (the whole sea is glowing to your eyes, and you’re just waiting for one of the others to call out about the jellies you can clearly see not a quarter of a mile away), but bright enough to illuminate what is under the surface for several inches. Once, someone spots a shark.  
Bob or Bert chuckles “Swim, bitch! The stingers are coming for you!”  
Balanced on the rock, Yoshida is having the time of her life steering the light all over the waters. You are tempted to steer her in the right direction, but they’re already calling you the Little Mermaid and you don’t want to evoke any serious suspicions about your real sea-senses.  
Finally, she stumbles across the beginnings of the jelly swarm and hoots in triumph.  
The excitement is palpable. For many, this is their first rubber tide.  
For you? Well, you’ve watched one of these things from underwater, and there is no way the shore-view can beat what you could see from under them. A rippling wave of them, bobbed up and down by the waves, their trailing stingers like seaweed that swayed in a sea-breeze.  
Nope. Pure, brutal, stinging, poisonous poetry.  
Even with this on your mind, you can’t help but glance back up at the house. Kankri has left a single light blazing in the kitchen (oh, there goes the carbon footprint) to ward off robbers as well as to remind you where the house is so you don’t get lost in the dark, which you are amazingly adept at.  
He already dropped by early on in the process- he basically walked you down here. He and the dog are off walking still, probably. The dog is nigh on inexhaustible, and sure to be making up for the fun she missed when you and Kankri were doing things on the couch that she is neither allowed to participate in nor watch.  
You’re just getting ready to swing into action when Cherry lets out a scream that sets your teeth on edge and forces an absolutely predatory growl out of your throat. In the confusion, no one notices. Sayyid has her under the arms. For a minute, you think he’s giving into the urge to kill her finally, but then you see he’s hauling her away from the water. Yoshida hops off the rock to help. Those that were close to the water quickly back away.  
At that moment, the colour of the sea changes, but only to your eyes. The glows change from a brilliant array of blues and greens to a searing, angry red.  
You look at Cherry. Her leg is gone, from the knee down. A stump that drips flesh and smokes on the sand.  
“Kankri.”  
You set off down the beach.

 

 

Kankri: date with the new guy?=========>

Your name is Kankri Vantas and you’re trying not to drool. Now, you’re not sure, but what you are doing right now might be applicable to categorise as the first date you have had since you and Brian Kramer went your separate ways shortly after graduation.  
The reason you’re having trouble with your jaw hanging and your control over the urge to salivate is due to the shirt Cronus has chosen to wear tonight. Somehow, the fabric manages to simultaneously conceal him from the belt to his clavicle, while also showing off every curve and contour of his chest. You are certain he does not mean to be indecent. In fact, you are certain that the shirt does not appear indecent to anyone but you, because you are staring, drinking him in, every second you get. His jeans are wonderfully tight too, especially around his calves. You never knew there was so much to celebrate about the back of one’s knees, but you consider yourself taught now, looking at Cronus’s body.  
He is by no means perfect. But you will never, ever tire of looking at him. Unfortunately, in spite of the balminess of the night, he has covered up his arms with a light over-shirt. Actually this might work in your favour. At least you don’t have to worry about becoming mesmerised by the way the waves move- flow, really- every time he moves.  
So, is this a date?  
You are not certain. The conventional date would be a movie and a dinner somewhere, you suppose. This is what Porrim and Damara do, and what Latula and Mituna do as well. Kurloz and Meulin tend to defer to hanging around in graveyards, but they’re weird. For your part, you were never much of a dater. Both you and your sole boyfriend in college have parents who claim they would not, but in reality, would have flipped their lids if they discovered their sons were messing around with other sons.  
Most of what you could class as ‘dates’ were furtive rendezvouses in the back of either of your cars, even when one set of parents were out of town and Karkat was removed from the house by a stroke of luck.  
As such, you find you have some difficulty when it comes to judging whether or not you are being asked out. Cronus has not behave as though he were on a date, however. He has behaved as though he were just hanging around with one of his guy-friends, although with slightly more decorum, you suspect, than he would normally have for close friends. You yourself are guilty of crassness and vulgarity when alone with Kurloz or Porrim (unstifled belches, copious profanity, ect), but there has been none of that so far.  
On the other hand, he hasn’t tried to hold your hand or told you you looked nice or done anything to suggest he is not as straight as the spine of a soldier. While you might be as straight as, oh, say the curvature of the earth, Cronus is giving off masculine vibes that are so far untainted, as some would claim they can be, by an attraction to you or other men. You wish to God he would just catcall one of the short-skirted girls passing the bar and end your suffering at least.  
“So your father w-was a Catholic priest?” repeats Cronus, having to shout a little bit over the din of the music and the drunks lining the bar.   
“Once upon a time. I assume he became disillusioned with his faith or bedded the wrong nun at some point. Something made him leave the cloth when he was twenty five or so, I believe. He doesn’t talk half as much about his career as a priest as he does about Jesus.”  
“I thought you were…sorry this is gonna sound really racist, but-”  
“Oh yes, Muslim. Historically we are, but Grand was converted. There’s some kind of charming story attached to it. He was overcome by the kindness of the Catholic missionaries or something similar. Anyway, long story short, while Grandfather was a crazy Catholic, Great Grandfather was a crazy Tajik Muslim. There’s some strange law in Sharia or something that requires a ‘devout’ Muslim to kill a convert, and the great-whatever was perfectly happy to try to make good on that.”  
Cronus’s eyes go wide “Damn! So, he got away, right?”  
You can’t help but smile “I wouldn’t be here if he didn’t. Yes, he migrated to America and found himself a nice Afghani girl with a nice, traditional converted family. That’s Grandma. They had my father, and my father had me, and here I am.”  
“W-what about the great- grandad?”  
“What about him?”  
“W-what happened to him?”  
It’s been such a long time since you have had the cause to relate your family history. Grandma filled your ears with the same stories every time you darkened her doorstep. Disgraced aunts and foolish uncles and scores of cousins that left their villages to fight for various causes in the name of what she refers to as ‘the brain-addled’s Islam’ and were sent back months later in baskets or envelopes. Karkat was never much interested in the history of all the psychotic jihadists in your family and tawdry exploits of various aunts and the like, but you were perfectly happy to sit by her and nurse the mandatory cup of green tea while she fiddled with some embroidery and recalled her Afghani youth.  
You suppose she might rely on you, in the place of a daughter, to carry on the family’s oral history, even though most of both sides chose to spare themselves the scandal of talking to converted families. You doubt you would ever visit any of them- most live in conservative rural areas where they would want you to attend the five daily prayers, and you doubt that they’d be very happy if they discovered your sexuality.  
You don’t tell this to Cronus, however. But the thought of a host of disapproving old biddies whispering about poor Lezlee’s bad one makes your beer taste a little sweeter.  
“Well, the medicine being what it was in rural Afghanistan in the late 1800s, he was diagnosed with a djinn when he started talking to himself. We think it must have been something like depression or schizophrenia, but the family hid him away until time caught up with him and carried away the embarrassment for him.”  
Cronus stares at you with surprise and amusement “That’s an aw-wesome story.”  
You nod “Just enough blood and guts to keep the kids interested, when I’ve got kids to bore.”  
As of yet, you haven’t let on as to which team you’re playing for.  
While you don’t really like it, you have found it is a whole lot easier to let the issue lie, playing along, but not so much so that you seem to commit yourself to heterosexuality. It’s a game you mastered in your social life in high-school. You’ve found that some people become very disagreeable or just plain awkward when they discover your preference to sausage over avocado. It is not easier in terms of the emotional effects, but it is easier in practicality to use a lie of omission to disguise yourself until you are sure that the other will not care if you admitted to being sexually attracted to inanimate objects.  
“Ya got a lil’ brother knockin’ around, yeah?” his eyes glaze over for just a second, then he is completely alert again “I’v-ve got one ‘a those.”  
You smile, your hand resting on your chin “Is yours a hellion too?”  
He rolls his eyes “Straight outta the bowels ‘a Hell. I’m sure Satan himself kicked him out, for all the trouble he causes.”  
“Mine is twelve,” you say “A newly minted pre-teen.”  
Cronus lets out a low whistle “Eleven. He’s pure evil.”  
You expect to talk a little bit about Karkat and Cronus’s brother, long enough to compare their various evils at least, but Cronus changes the topic quickly. Smoothly, too, as if this were where the natural flow of the conversation was going to take you.  
“That girl that was in your dorm the other night, Priya? Something like that.”  
Your heart sinks.  
Not only has he not followed the conversational convention, which would of course have been to divulge something about his own family, whom you are sure must be weird and wild to allow their eldest son to tramp about with those tattoos, but he’s finally given himself away. Mr Straight Man. The All-American boy, one who plays football as a hobby and goes fishing on the weekend and is clean-shaven and uses a word like ‘pussy- ramming’ to describe sexual exploits. No doubt every single one of his girlfriends so far has been discussed at length with his other guy-friends, and labelled as ‘real tight’ and the like.   
Porrim says that’s essentially why she gave up sex with men for the other possibility her bisexuality enabled- because the majority believe that ‘tightness’ during sex is the sign of a good-quality vagina, and not a sign of their own damning inability to arouse their partner.  
It puts a little smile on your face to say this next part “Porrim? Or perhaps her girlfriend, Damara?”  
To your surprise, Cronus doesn’t so much as blink “The doll with the ink and the tiny dress. Black hair? Indian? Not the other one with the chopsticks in her hair.”  
You don’t hear very much past ‘tiny dress’.  
Now, going by his innocent expression that was just an observation. Were he interested in Porrim, he would have probably nudged your arm and grinned in that suggestive way ‘pussy-rammers’ will do when talking about a girl they think they have a chance with. Certainly, he would have said something about Damara being her girlfriend.  
Could it be?  
No, God is not that kind.  
God is not going to drop amazingly hot, interesting, mysterious single men that smell pleasantly of the sea into your lap. God doesn’t like homos- a childhood around the Catholic taught you that much. That is, if God is about at all. You strongly suspect He fucked off to bewilder another planet with conflicting Biblical laws and theological narrations that defy every single ounce of scientific logic in place.  
“That’s Porrim. What about her?”  
Cronus shrugged “She your girlfriend?”  
Wow, that was not subtle. At least you hope that was Cronus being not subtle. You hope that was not the curiosity he surely expects you to believe it is.  
To steady yourself, you take another sip of beer and end up draining the dregs. Dear God, maybe you are not abhorred. Maybe the angels date members of their own genders, if they have genders at all. Maybe God doesn’t care about gay guys and it was just a miscommunication between Him and whoever transcribed the Bible when they wrote that ‘Man may not lay with Man’ bit.  
“I just named Damara as her girlfriend.”  
Cronus blinks “Oh. Yeah. Just w-wonderin’…you about finished? I’m thinkin’ I need a quick w-walk by the riv-ver before I can get ta sleep. W-walk off the drunk, or somethin’.”  
You are very glad that he looks towards the door, then, and does not notice you blush.

 

Cronus: Kill this land-poundin’ idiot ========>

Yeah, you’re working up to it.  
First you figured you’d lead him away from the bright lights and the noise. Into a quieter stretch of town. In a way he wouldn’t notice. Suggesting the walk along the river was pretty clever on your part, you think. This way once you’re done stabbing his land-loving guts out, you can shove his body in weighted with a few dozen stones and call it good.  
Preparing an alibi is unnecessary. There are plenty of charms and spells you know that are easy to whip up and effective as hell. All you gotta do is pull a glamour over your head to blend into the backdrop and the police won’t notice you- won’t even bother to question you when they start making calls in the dorms. No one else will notice either. Whenever you wanna reappear on the collective consciousness, all you have to do is pull off the glamour and boom! You’re back, sans the idiot!  
This kinda reminds you of hunting at home. Those hunts where you spun up a little light and hung it over your head, then plunged into the darkness, leading away the predator that believed it was the predator right up until you turned around and set on it with spears and your teeth.  
Kankri’s no predator. If he were, he’d have realised your intent and long time ago and made a break for it. Maybe killed you with his bare hands- show you how they do it on the surface.  
You doubt it. Life in the sea has taught you to discern the killers from the grazers. The same can be said for the people up here; killers lurk and jibe and look down their nose, thinking they’re the top of the world for a good reason. Grazers mock all that like one of those freaky spikey worms pretending to be a poisonous plant, but really, they’re not cut out for much more than champing at the seaweed and feeding the killers.  
Kankri is the kind of guy who follows a guy he only met two weeks ago into a dark, sorta isolated place. He’s a grazer, and not a very smart one at that.  
But still, you can’t help but feel a bit of pity for Kankri. He’s a nice guy, but as your Pa is fond of saying, nice is a good way to get killed. He’s right too. Kankri has happily let you lead him into an area lit only by the lamps over the streets, so most of the light is thrown off of the murky surface of the ‘river’- a joke is what it is, and it’s making you gag just to look at it, let alone smell the muck and mud in it.  
The only possible escape is a sheer concrete wall, which is slippery with a recent rain and several interesting types of moss that look like they might kill you if you touched them. He won’t be able to get up that. There are little staircases set into the walls at regular intervals. You haven’t seen a soul go by on your level for the entire walk, although there are quite a few going by up there. You’ll have to get him about exactly between the last staircase and the next and smother his cries well when you kill him.  
Because he’s cost you so much time and sleep in your mission (you’re here to observe ALL of the humans, and yet you’re finding you prefer seeing Kankri’s world through Kankri’s eyes), you won’t be using a spell. You aren’t quite mad enough at him to make his death slow and painful, but you don’t want it to be over in a flash. You want to feel him go. You want the time to explain at least a little of it to him, in small words, so he’ll understand.  
You keep steeling yourself for the job, and reaching into your jacket for a knife, then he’ll say something else and you’ll get involved in responding and before you know it you’ve lost another five minutes just chattering to this fool. You meant to do it about the second day you knew Kankri. Stuff just got in the way, you guess. Like school and grades and meeting people and your lectures and that obnoxious love at first sight thing. You still have your doubts about that, but not enough in the way of doubts to convince yourself it isn’t true.  
“Why did you move out here?” he asks “I mean, apart from because your father suggested it was a good idea.”  
Your lips twitch in a wry smile. Why do you keep telling him things? He knows so many things about you, taken totally out of the context of being a mer, but still! You should have killed him on the third day!  
“Thought it w-would be good for me…home’s kinda smotherin’, ya know? Everyone’s gotta….” Shit what was the idiom? Good thing he thinks this is a dramatic pause “Leave the nest sometime.”  
He nods thoughtfully. Damn, you need to bone up on your skills. Immersion is the way to learn the lingo, they told you, but half of the time you gotta stop yourself from spewing your native tongue of clicks and chirps and the oh-so-important body language. You want your tail back. Now.  
“If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t look very at ease in this city.”   
He offers this meekly, like he’s telling you your essay is kinda shit or your tattoos are gaudy.   
You shrug to let him know it’s all good, while your hand clenches around the handle of a knife inside your jacket pocket “I ain’t. But I’m gettin’ used to it.”  
Kankri mirrors your shrug “I understand that. I don’t miss home at all most of the time…my brother, I suppose, but…what I miss is the comfort. It’s strange, because the comfort comes from a routine that made me absolutely insane. But now that I’m here? What I wouldn’t give for one of those back-seat bumps with good ol’ Brian Kramer.”  
Your eyes go wide “This sounds like a story I need ta hear.”  
Realising what he has revealed, Kankri goes an adorable shade of pink “Oh, nothing! It was just one of those awkward…awkward relationships. You know what I mean. Just sort of a scramble for…to prove yourself a sexual beast and whatnot. Something to brag about.”  
From the way he talks about his dad and what little he has let on about the town he came from (small, and ‘conservative’ being the land-pounder’s word for narrow-minded, except for at his school where it didn’t matter if the genitals matched and who knew about it) was not the kind of place that would have let him have been with Brian Kramer publically.  
You wonder idly if that was his first love. If he has had a love since then. If he has ever been in love at all.  
Ok, that’s as far as that strain of thought goes. Time to stop. Time to kill him.  
Your finger twitches at the handle of the knife and that is all it does.  
Brian is a fucking stupid name.  
“I moved ‘cos I wanted ta,” you say honestly. If you pretend he has a set of gills lurking under those curls gathered at his neck, you can almost rid yourself of any feelings of disgust for confiding in a land-dweller “I had ta, as well. I mean, I really fought ta get out here. It was a big up-hill battle and I had ta study like you wouldn’t believe ta prove I could do it. There were a lot ‘a…”  
Other candidates very much more qualified than you are, who are too well-trained to fall in love like you’re trying not to do.  
“…reasons I shouldn’t’a gone, from my dad’s point ‘a view, but I had ta anyway. Fuck him and his ideas ‘a me an’ all that stuff.”  
“Now that,” he says softly “I can understand. Well done for getting away.”  
“Yeah.”  
The two of you walk on in silence for a few minutes.  
This dagger is really goddamned beautiful, the one you’ll be using to cut his ribs up and jab his kidneys. It was expertly carved from the bone of what they call a leopard seal up here, by your little brother. Eridan is surprisingly good at making little, exquisite things from debris, and even better and finding practical and violent uses for them.  
“Are you alw-ways like this?”  
Kankri is confused “What do you mean? I mean, I am afraid I can’t quite stop talking a lot of the time-”  
“No, not that.” you give him a friendly punch on the shoulder to let him know how platonic this next bit is “I mean are you alw-ways this nice?”  
That stops him cold for a few minutes. He opens and closes his mouth several times. Finally, he comes out with: “No, actually. Usually I’m a very nosy, judgemental asshole, pardon the French. I’m not that nice, really. I just know what it’s like to be new. I mean, I have it far easier for bringing a set of friends with me when I left…in truth I sort of had to run to catch up with them…however, I do remember what it is like to be a stranger.”  
“So you’re takin’ me under your w-wing?”  
Kankri shifts his weight “I suppose? Perhaps I am not the best person to be offering, ah, wing-space out, but I am the most convenient, for being your neighbour. Loz is too, and I’m sure he would be a stellar mentor if he could keep off the pot for ten minutes and out of the graveyards for twenty, but he cannot, so I’m afraid you’re stuck with me as far as company goes, unless you’re compelled to seek out the guys across the hall,” he cups his hand to his mouth and hisses, as if sharing a secret “They’re always drunk at parties. Vomit-inducing drunk. I wouldn’t recommend them unless you want to get sprayed like you’re hanging around with the Exorcist girl.”  
“I w-wouldn’t mind bein’ stuck w-with you.”  
Kankri smiles a little “You should formally meet the rest of my friends before you decide that.”  
“Eh.” You shrug “I’ll take the risk. C’mon, absorb me.”  
Without meaning to, you reach out and catch his arm. You have just noticed there are no stones here. You’re not jumping in that dirty water under any circumstances, so Kankri will float. Whatever.  
You just want to get this over with.  
What’s with that look on his face? He must think you’re about to kiss him. Good for him. Let him live that fantasy before it all goes seriously sour and you start raking his lungs out with a knife.  
You bring him a little closer, your hand on his shoulder. Remarkably, he doesn’t say a word. Confident that he won’t see it, you draw the knife from your jacket pocket quietly and poise it behind him. He’s so focussed on staring at you that you can drive this into his back no problem, nope, no trouble at all. He’ll be knocked flat and won’t be able to resist, and you can whisper whatever the fuck you want to at him and then finish him off and let the river carry the evidence away while you whip up that glamour.  
Unfortunately, before you can even move, Kankri takes you by the collars of your jacket and brings you down a little, rolling up on his tiptoes at the same time, and kisses you.  
One part of your mind shrieks: KILL HIM.  
The other part wants to know if all humans can do that with their mouths, or if yours is just really talented.  
After a small struggle, you toss the knife into the river and wrap your arms around his slim waist.  
Fuck it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the last chapter for a little while. I'm about to move house and I won't have wifi for a few days. The next time a chapter is uploaded, it will actually be from an entirely different continent. Got some Grandfolk to visit. Hopefully, I'll have a lot more time to write out there so the updates will be regular.  
> Also, kinda sorry about that cliff-hanger there. I didn't realise how cliffy-ey that hanger was gonna be until it was down, and by then it was already 10:30 at night and I was like 'I have debating tomorrow I cannot do this'  
> Weak, I know.


	8. This is almost what happened in Jaws, except we're all dressed (not Eridan though)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back in a wi-fi zone. So, yeah, i could tell you about 20 hours total of flight and huge delays that were even longer than my flight from God's dusty nowhere, but no.  
> People are here to read fanfiction, not hear about hellish travel plans.  
> Just know that i am with the grandfolk and they have peaches.  
> Now, onto the Kronkri

Your name is Kankri Vantas, and you wish your dog wouldn’t stray so close to the waves.  
Girl knows she’s not supposed to get into the water. Cronus has been key in teaching that to her, as he is the one who walks her most often. You know she likes him the best and listens better to him, which always kind of irks you. Although you should know better, being a student of psychology, you feel that an animal should return exactly as much love as is given by its owner, and treat however many owners it has with the loving impartiality of a grandmother.  
The dog does not. She likes you, she loves Cronus, and she does only as much as she is made to do when it comes to her good behaviour around the ocean. Cronus is able to take her off the leash around the ocean, but you have had to keep her firmly at your side to prevent her from disappearing into the surf. The worst way to end this day would be to have to wrestle a salty and wet, recalcitrant dog into the bath.  
“C’mon, girl, behave yourself.” you urge her “Let’s just get this walk done then we can collapse.”  
Despite your initial intentions to name the dog, for she surely has her own name in her own language (a childhood of watching ‘Toy Story’ on repeat has convinced you that every single thing you think is inanimate has its own culture and its own name), you have fallen into the habit of calling her ‘Girl’. She now answers to ‘Girl’ as if she’s got it engraved on her collar.  
She tugs at her leash, her nose pointing stubbornly towards the water. The leash constricts painfully around your clenched fist, but you keep your patience and stop. With a gentle tug, you bring her back to your side.  
“Come to heel,” you try earnestly.  
She looks up and you and blinks her dark eyes innocently. She has no idea what you want. It’s not your fault- she has learned all of her obedience commands in that strange language of clicks and chirps that Cronus still employs when he is very upset, scared or it is early in the morning and he has no idea where he is for a few moments. To the rest of the world, it sounds as if he can whistle like a professional. To you? Well you can even understand some of what he is saying, since you have been listening to the murmurs of his nightmares for close to six years now.  
“Girl,” you say a little more sternly “Girl, sit.”   
Mercifully, she knows this one. She plops her bottom in the damp sand. Her tongue lolls out, and her face implores praise.  
Patting the top of her head, you risk a step again.  
This time, she is much more cooperative.  
“Good girl.”  
You’re quite a busy person. There are not very many moments in your life like this; walking the dog on the moonlight beach, with the sound of lapping waves and a soft surf in the place of the chattering voices that come out of the phone at work.  
Even when alone like this, your head manages to be quite busy. Thoughts buzz about in your mind like a hive that has been kicked from its tree trunk. Inevitably, they always spew over the top of your lip and into the open air. This has been a problem of yours from basically the moment you learned to talk. And even more unfortunately, the majority of the people in the general vicinity of the word-vomit think the criticisms, the words and all the rest are aimed at them in some personal way. This has made you unpopular at the best of the times, hated at the worst.  
At least the dog doesn’t take it personally.  
“You know I found out that our own Gamzee Makara is being raised by his nephew? You know, the boy with the wiry black curls and the arms that could knock over a vase at 10 feet when he only turns around? He plays with you. He lies on the lawn and doesn’t give a single shit when you lick him with a tongue that has just been scouring your own bottom. That’s him.”  
The dog pants happily and trots along at a leisurely clip.  
“I’m not sure why this has unnerved me so, but it has. To think that Gamzee never ever knew, isn’t it just strange? I mean, discovering something such as that makes you wonder about your own reality, doesn’t it? What if my biological father is really my play-boy grandfather and the meekly Catholic Persian man that has raised me from the start is actually my nephew? What if we really did find Karkat in the zoo as I have told him since he was old enough to understand the horrible connotations of being found in a monkey cage, and no one has taken the liberty of telling me because they were afraid my delicate mental state might be upset by it?”  
The dog sneezes several times.  
You swipe your hair out of your eyes with your forearm and sneeze too, feeling the ghost of a tickle inside your nose.  
“I mean, at least I know the dastardly family secrets of my husband, don’t I? But who knows what I might have to tell him when my father finds it in his heart to tell me our dark family secrets? What if we’re also mermaids, and he’s some kind of cast-away prince too?”  
This is a scenario you have run through in your head several times before. Each time, it has grown more fantastical and improbable until you have to laugh out loud at yourself to find the dime-novel fantasy romance you have imagined yourself into. It’s not only impossible, but vain to imagine that you’re really the progeny of an escapee mermaid royal. In fact, it also brings up the possibility of incest, with Cronus being some kind of far-flung cousin, so if it was physically possible for either of you to fall pregnant your children would have an extra eye or large ears.  
“Thought not. Silly to think, isn’t it? You would not believe some of the places my mind goes on a boring afternoon stuck in the office.”  
Sometimes, on those boring afternoons, you have imagined the dog replying to you when you say this or something similar to this general sentiment. She never does. She never will, unless she is stolen away by scientists of a dubious quality and changed experimented upon to give her vocal cords suited to the task of English.  
For a while, you do not talk.  
For a while, you are content to rest your throat. The worst of your concerns have already been spewed up all over Cronus. And it is Cronus who finally silences your gibbering mouth. You are content to imagine him working at the shore, dodging around piled jellyfish, taking readings that might as well be in his native tongue for the amount you can understand. When he comes back from a good night of study and solid data, his pale skin is flushed, making his freckles stand out miles. He will chatter away to you, aware that his findings are really meaningless to you and that the only message you understand is his excitement.  
You hope he’ll be done soon. The way the night is panning out, you’re sure the two of you are going to be up until the dawn if you want to talk to each other. Already, your eyelids feel as if they are weighted by anvils. You can’t see the jellyfish yourself, with the sea being dark and your eyes being relatively untrained when it comes to spotting any form of sea life that doesn’t have a fin.  
Even so, you pause to stare at the waves.  
When the ocean is like this, it is somewhat threatening. Dark blankets of grey and black, sprawling out under the stars until the stuff blends into the shadowed horizon. You don’t like looking at the ocean that long at the night, although you have little problem with walking beside it. You know you can run away. Just looking at the sea is enough to unnerve you, but when you allow your other problems to worry you it is harder to remember the threat unless you’re faced with it.  
Suddenly, the dog stiffens.  
“What is it girl?”  
She begins to bark at the waves.  
You squint at the waves, trying to figure out what is bothering her. It couldn’t be the jellyfish, could it? You don’t see any of the animals she would normally bark at- she about lost her voice one time, going at a pod of dolphins that gambolled especially close to the shore just to bother her.  
Cronus and his colleagues are at least a mile and a half behind you. Besides, she would not be facing the waves if they bothered them.  
Finally, you spot something dark just beyond the surf. Your heart skips a beat. A boat? That makes sense, for the dog to be barking at, at least.  
But as the object draws closer and breaks through the surface, you realise it is not a boat.  
Running might not be enough, either.

Cronus: where is your husband? =========>

Your lungs burn. Your calves ache. You have not run this fast in a long time.  
Logically, you shouldn’t be able to run this fast, but you’d be surprised if your colleagues notice with Cherry melting in front of them. A mile has dissolved under your feet in less than two minutes, but something inside you already ‘knows’ it is too late.  
Is it too late?  
Probably not. Kankri hates getting wet, doesn’t he? You have got to guide him into the ocean by the hand and to dunk his head gently in a breaking wave before he will swim. You seriously doubt he is swimming at this time of the night as well, considering the fact that he just re-watched ‘Jaws’ on the weekend.  
He has to be safe.  
You did not survive all you have survived to find your husband as a steaming puddle on the sand.  
“Kankri!” you call for the fifth time.  
No answer.  
Beside you, the sea’s angry red colour stings your eyes. The patch of jellyfish seems completely unaffected by whatever is in the water. You can still smell the poison on Cherry, although she is far behind you. You can smell the poison hanging in the air, in thick, heavy clouds like the humidity of a rainstorm rolling in.   
You have never seen anything like this.  
But you have heard of it before.  
Something your father warned you might happen- way, way back when, back when you still hated all humans and had no reason to think you’d ever get the chance to marry someone you loved, and of course, when you had a tail instead of two legs. He called it the ‘Ragnarok’ or the ocean, which was his personal name for it. You had no knowledge of Norse mythology at the time and thought it was the actual term. As it turns out, there is no term, but Ragnarok suits it perfectly.  
Ragnarok, when the world ended by fire.  
Ragnarok in the ocean happens when a spell is enforced, a spell that takes so long to brew whoever has cast it has to have been working since the day the Sea Witch was vanquished.   
Tonight, anything that touches the water that does not already belong to it will perish the moment it touches the water.  
“KANKRI!”

 

Sollux: carry Eridan ========>

Your name is Sollux Captor and you’re afraid Eridan going to die before you can get him home.  
The afternoon passed in a haze. His every breath is pain like needles filled his lungs. His movement, God forbid that he has to move, is worse than fire. It seemed at the very start that his cells would combust and set him alight in your arms, but he has stayed intact so far.  
And he’s been naked.  
You shouldn’t think about this, and technically he isn’t naked anymore because you wrapped him up in your jacket and covered the bits he will learn to be embarrassed about, but…  
You can’t get over the fact that he is here. You can’t even begin to approach the fact that you’re holding your childhood love, aged perfectly, completely naked, so you have to just sort of stand back and admire it. Congratulate fate for making up for every shitty thing that has happened since he left by pressing him back into your arms, naked and dripping.  
But that’s all secondary.  
To you, what is most important right now is getting him home.

Yesterday, Cronus mentioned in passing that he would be on the beach tonight. Something about a rubber tide that has most of the town warned off the beach tonight. Thank God too, because you know you’re not a skilled enough liar to brush off Eridan as just a drunken high-school buddy.   
“Hold on Eridan,” you say uselessly, for about the fifteenth time “We’re almost there.”  
There are no lights on the shore. The road is dark, unlit except for the odd passing headlight. You haven’t even begun to consider flagging one of them down. Who knows who could be in there? What if it were someone who could recognise Eridan as a freshly turned mermaid? Or just a run-of-the-mill psycho killer? You run fast when you’re scared, and at approximately the speed of light when you’re terrified. Eridan? He doesn’t even know how to use his feet. He isn’t conscious of a world outside of his own pain yet, and you know there is no way to escape from anything with him helpless in your arms.  
You tell yourself everything is going to be peachy the literal second you find Cronus.  
Cronus can fix it all. He’s a big brother, and as you understand it, other people’s big brothers guide and protect. Yours was great, even though he was the one who needed the protection, the guidance and the almost-constant surveillance to make sure he didn’t fall over and forget how to stand up. The problem is the beach is totally deserted.  
There’s not a soul for miles around, it would seem, so the possibility of Eridan dying where you stand is very real.  
He shudders and coughs every now and then. Apart from his shallow breathing, this is the only sign of life from him. Later on into the afternoon when the spasms subsided, he could get your name out. You were too afraid to move him then.  
You persuaded yourself to at least get him into the shadow of the cliffs, out of the sun so his skin would not burn, but that was it. For most of the day you have been stretched out on your side and curled around him to keep him warm. His skin is freakishly cold, even now. You can only hope this is a natural side-effect of the disguise- retaining a healthy little piece of his real body. Otherwise, it might mean a fever has already frozen him on the inside.  
For someone with the amount of experience with death that you have had, you would think you would recognise the good Reaper himself when he was approaching. Back when he was still in the kind of mind-frame where he wanted to talk to you, your father described the way death sneaked in on your mother. The way her breathing would slow a fraction more each day. How parts of her body would stop moving for a few minutes, as if they had died ahead of the rest of the body. How she was further and further away each day, no matter what he tried to call her back.  
Obviously Eridan’s death will be much quicker than that, if he is to die, but you still wish you at least knew what the final hoo-rah looked like enough to really recognise it coming.  
Eridan might be dead by tomorrow.  
Eridan might also be ballroom dancing by tomorrow. You just don’t know. All you know is that you have to get him to Cronus.  
There has to be something out here.  
The lights of the city are distant at this point. Every step you take takes you further from the city, from the help that might be there for him. Cronus and Kankri’s house has never seemed so far away before. Ok, so normally you would drive here, but you have walked this route a couple of times in the daylight and have never found the stretch of beach that separate them from civilization to be this remote and this long.  
It’s actually kind of insane. Part of you has decided this is all a bad dream. Presently, you will wake up to an even worse reality in a cold bed with a cold day ahead of you. And you really are going crazy- after all, you imagined Eridan in the water just yesterday evening.  
But until that happens, you’ll keep walking and hope for the best. Ahead, there are no lights on the beach.  
After Eridan warned you the water was going to be poisoned, you could get no more from him. You have no idea what he means, except that going near the water will mean certain death tonight. That is why you are walking on the most extreme edge of the sand, so every now and then you take a step in the dunes. A life-time of conditioning means that you cannot quite bring yourself to trample all over the ‘fragile ecosystem’ of the dunes, but you’re sure that you’re far enough away from the water not to be injured by it. Close enough to the water to spot Cronus and his team and their light. God, you hope they’ve got a light. If the jellyfish are that weird kind that glow, they might have turned out the lights to better observe the pigments at work blah, blah, blah…  
Even if this is the case, you’re sure you will hear them.  
“Just hang on Eridan. You’re going to be fine. I promise.”  
You sound so earnest, you almost believe yourself.

Cronus: who is that? =========>

You know it’s not Kankri, but when you spot the shape coming up towards you along the beach you almost faint with shock and relief.  
It takes a moment for your eyes to makes sense of that lumpy shape in the glare of the ocean, but after a few seconds of hard blinking (praying that is it your husband) the shape resolves itself into Sollux and some wet, shivering kid in his arms.  
That kid just happens to be your brother.  
“Sollux!”  
He freezes, unable to see you in the dark. He’s actually quite far away from you right now, so he would have heard that as only a faint cry. With a final, mad burst of energy, you cover the half a mile that separates you in less than 30 seconds and stop right in front of him, kicking up the sand behind you.  
Surprised by your speed, Sollux starts back. His arms tighten protectively around Eridan, hiding his face in his chest.  
“It’s me!” you say between heavy breaths “It’s Cronus! Eridan turned himself?”  
Sollux swallows hard “Yeah, he-”  
“Tell me later. I need to find Kankri.”  
“But he’s hurt!”  
Your heart seems to rent itself in two.  
You don’t know how to feel about this.  
Of course, your first instinct is to find your husband and get him back to the house as fast as you can. Who knows what could happen to him if you don’t get to him? Well, you do- he could melt and die.   
But here’s your brother.  
The last time you saw him, he was barely big enough to hold his hunting-harpoon upright, but it is unmistakably him. His smell. His stupid, fluffy hair. His freckles.   
You love Kankri, but you have loved Eridan for longer. Besides, he is your brother, and he is right in front of you in terrible pain. You can sympathise- those first days of the transformation were so terrible you had to stay in the cave on the sea where you had taken the damned concoction, under his and your father’s care, as well as with a host of others who had helped to engineer the entire project.  
Knowing how bad it hurts, you simply cannot leave him here.  
“Give him to me.”  
Sollux blinks “What are you-”  
You shake your head “Sollux, go straight back to the house. If Kankri is there, you get him out on the beach and have him wait in front of our place in the dunes with a light. If he’s not, write a note for him and stick it on the front door so he knows what to do, then take my car and drive to town and tell Gamzee and the rest of ‘em to stay away from the water. Tell them the jellyfish put toxins in the water or somethin’.”  
From the way Sollux’s eyes go wide with horror, you suspect he had entirely forgotten about the rest of the town up until this moment.  
“What are you…Eridan?” he manages.  
Gently, you take him from Sollux’s arms. He is reluctant to let go, but you don’t have to force him.   
Going by the look on his face, you get the feeling you’re about to get embroiled in another one of those troublesome true loves that span the sea and the land.  
Great. This is just what needs to happen, on top of all the other shit.  
Eridan has certainly grown since the last time you saw him. Considering he was about twelve at the time, it’s not surprising. You’ll marvel at it later.  
“I’ve got to find Kankri,” you’re struck by a sudden brainwave. How could you not have figured this out before?  
Kankri is walking the dog, and the dog always answers when you whistle for her. You can’t be too far from Kankri at this point, unless he has sprouted wings in the last half hour and flown up the coast.  
Holding Eridan in a sort of sling with one arm, you whistle with your free hand. The whistle is so loud and piercing that Sollux covers his ears and about falls over, and even Eridan stirs, his troubled face souring at the noise.  
“The dog?” asks Sollux “With Kankri?”  
“Yeah.” you cradle Eridan more carefully “She can lead us to him. Or at least drag him right the fuck up the beach to us.”  
For a full minute, nothing happens. You are afraid to walk in case you go in the wrong direction and the dog can’t find you. Once more, you whistle. This time, you are rewarded with a distant bark that comes from in front of you. You had Eridan over to Sollux sloppily and tear towards the noise. The dog appears in the red glare. Like Sollux, she almost dies of fright when you screech to a stop beside her. Quickly, you scoop her up and check her over for wounds.  
She is unhurt, but licks your face and whimpers frantically. Her legs pedal in mid-air. Placing her back down, your heart swells as she runs back in the direction she has come. You run so fast the smell of poison is almost chased from your nose by the tearing wind. You outstrip the dog in a second. It is occurs to you that she could be leading you towards the dunes in the same instant that you spot something in the water.  
In the water, not on the sand.  
Without even thinking about it, you throw yourself into the waves. Immediately, your nerves come alive with the sensation of a fire without heat. Why did it not occur to you before that this would not hurt you? You may be living on the land as a human, but you can never change the truth of your race or magic.  
The thing in the sea is lost in the glare. You can just barely make it out as a smear of shadow. It makes no noise nor a ripple in the water.   
“Hey!” you shout “Come back here!”  
That has never worked and fails to work now.  
It disappears before you can come close to reaching it. The dog begins to bark from the shore, calling you back.  
“Kankri?”   
But apart from the dog, you find the shore empty when you arrive. She turns circles in the sand around a single spot, still whimpering.  
Your heart sinks “What the hell is going on here?”  
What was that in the water? Was it anything at all? Did you just imagine that?  
What the hell did you just stumble over?  
You stoop and scoop up a fistful of sand, around the object that has made you stumble. The sand slowly sifts from between your fingers. A plain gold band is left in your palm.  
Kankri’s wedding ring.

 

Karkat Vantas: wake up screaming=========>


	9. Can we call this thing a 'wet dream', or...?

Karkat Vantas: are you still screaming? ========>

Your name is Karkat Vantas and yes, you are still screaming.  
You fully intend to keep screaming until something thick enough to muffle your cries of terror is stuffed into your mouth and taped there, because holy fuck, was that a nightmare for the ages. In fact, you don’t even care that you’re howling like a little kid that has just stubbed their toe on a stool (that hurts no matter how old you are), that was a terrifying nightmare.  
Like, holy shit, how can anything on that level of fucked-up even exist in your brain? That stuff was worthy of Silent Hill. Not the shitty movie franchise, but the intense, psychologically thrilling video game series with Guillermo del Toro scrawled all over the fourth instalment.  
Your first breath has finally run out. You think you might calm down just a little now that you have to pause to take a breath, but nope, that was just a pit stop to refuel. Damn, how long is this scream going to last?  
After what seems like a throat-stretching eternity, the door bursts open. Your father rushes in with the flood of light and grabs you by the shoulders. He shakes you a little bit, as is the custom when you wake up like this, until you stop screaming.  
“What in heaven’s name is wrong?” he gasps “Are you sick?”  
Panting, you punch him in the shoulder, shaking his grip off “Fuck off Dad. Nothing is wrong.”  
“Karkat, I thought you were being attacked!”  
“Well I’m not! I’m fine so let’s celebrate by forgetting this ever happened!”  
Of course, being your father, he feels compelled to pat you on the head and retrieve the covers from the tight, sweaty ball they have been kicked into at the bottom of the bed. He re-arranges the pillows that have been mussed by your thrashing, and finishes with a rather awkward kiss on the forehead.  
“Are you sure you’re-”  
“Fine.” you insist “Now, go. Go do whatever it is you have to do. I’m sure it’s far more important than whatever it was I was screaming about.”  
He hesitates in the doorway “Was it a nightmare?”  
“No,” you lie.  
Yes it was. An insanely vivid, painful nightmare, the likes of which only a madman should have to experience, or even be able to conjure up. But your dad doesn’t need to know that. All he needs to know is that his remaining son is straight and mentally healthy and at peace with some form of God, and he’s happy.  
“Alright. Just let me know if you need me.”  
“I’ll scream again.” you promise.  
To coax him out the doorway, you throw a pillow and snatch up a book from your nightstand to follow it. He closes the door and narrowly misses being struck by a hard-back edition of ‘American Gods’. The book lands on its open pages. You grit your teeth and hop out of bed to rescue it before it gets bent out of shape. Unfortunately, by the time you return to bed you are completely awake, with no chance of going back to sleep any time soon. It is only eleven o’clock at night, which means there are at least six glorious hours of bitter sleeplessness before you can start a new day.  
Life would be so much easier if you were a night-blogger. Then you could live large by night and sleep like a sloth during the day, the way your body-clock wants to. With that screaming fit there, you have very effectively chased away whatever chance of sleep you had tonight, so there’s not even a point in shutting your eyes to try.  
“Fuck,” you say “Fuck this. Life is not all fight clubs without sleep. Life is shit without sleep. Life without sleep is wanting to sew your eyelids shut.”  
You could go on like this. On any other night, you would. But your throat is a little sore from all that ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAH’-ing it was doing only moments before, and besides…you feel kind of unsafe at the moment. The atmosphere in the room is not one you should fill with the babble of an unnerved boy trying to calm himself down. The dream has made it heavy, made the shadows stretched weirdly and much darker and deeper than they have the right to be.  
You get the feeling that somebody is in here, watching you.  
After a dream like that, it’s hard not to feel that way.  
In your dream, you were bound. Not by chains or any of the conventional bindings, but by smooth, silky seaweed. It’s lush and pearly green, almost transparent as it ripples in a gentle current. You remember you spent a lot of time marvelling at the colour and the texture of the seaweed, just because you didn’t want to have to think about anything else. It was like you knew where you were- and not in that weird dream way where your world sort of unfurls itself in front of you, with you making it up as you go along.  
You knew you knew this place. Like, it was already there in your conscious mind. You’ve never felt a thing like it before in any other dream or nightmare, and you have had plenty of the latter.  
In this dream, you couldn’t talk. Your mouth was not bound, but all around you there was a sort of insidious pressure. Opening your mouth would allow this pressure inside you, to wreak its havoc on your organs and your bones.  
The dream was mostly about trying not to open your mouth. About feeling that burn in your lungs that made it feel as if lava should be dripping through your chest. About blinking against the sting of salt again and again, until you were almost blind so the world was shrunk just to that seaweed rippling beside your tied wrists. What was the rest of the place like? You can’t tell- you have completely forgotten.  
The dream ended when your mouth finally opened and the water spilled in, cold and salty and almost as bad as the fire that burned your chest. Your neck felt as if something had sunk its teeth into the flesh and torn it open. After that, your breathing became so much better you wanted to cry more from relief than from the defeat.  
One breath, and then you were awake and screaming.  
The weird thing is…the dream wasn’t just about drowning. It was also about your brother’s husband, whom you’ll be meeting again for the first time in years this weekend. His name is Cronus. You have spent a good amount of time wondering what he looks like since you saw him towards the end of his college years. Kankri describes his married life at your request in the emails you exchange (secretly, of course, everything must be secret), but he has yet to include a picture of anything but his beach-front house and the dog they still haven’t named.  
You don’t have to wonder what he looks like anymore. You know, now- dark and pale and freckled, with green-flecked purple eyes like none you have ever seen before. He is tall and lithe, like an athlete, although he can’t stand to work out when he could be doing other more productive things, like reading or watching ‘Orange is the new black’.  
You know what his hair feels like (it’s kinda coarse, actually, not like the spun-black gold you thought it would be from the image of him) and what his laugh sounds like and that he’s horrible allergic to bees and carries a secret Epi-Pen in his bag in case of stinger-related emergencies. You know a lot of other things about him you wish you didn’t know, because they’re so private and intimate and loving it just makes your teeth ache and your skin crawl.  
It wasn’t your dream. It was Kankri’s, you’re sure. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Stealing your brother’s dream? That sounds pretty fucking impossible. Then again, you’ve known a lot of things perfectly probable that others have called impossible.  
Your second-best friend of your childhood fell in love with a mermaid called Eridan, after all.  
You’ve seen some serious shit in your time.  
The other thing that really throws you about the Cronus-part of the dream is how much he looks like Eridan. Now, in fairness, your addled mind could have just invented that to add that little bit more spice to what already proves to be a totally disconcerting dream. The extra, dramatic twist. The zoom-in close-up with the swell of dramatic music as you give a deep, trembling gasp at the realisation that Eridan had a brother too and he is so much closer to your life than you would have ever guessed.  
“This is shitty.”  
You roll over and grope across your night-stand, intending to call Kankri and put an end to this foreboding. Also, you want to hear his voice. You want to know that he’s alright, that the dream you have just jolted from screaming was nothing but a weird dream. That stuff you suddenly know about Cronus? Probably dredged it up from one of those holes that form in your memory thanks to your flirtations with insomnia. A constant lack of good, solid sleep has basically ruined you, as far as memory goes. At school you have to study like Athena herself is leaning over your shoulder and tutting at your work to have any hope of getting through your work, which suits you fine. It’s not like there’s a social life to move onto after your assignments are done or anything.  
No, that wasn’t sarcasm. The wide majority of your social life is conducted via texts to friends you haven’t seen since before your first chest hair (last one too; that turned out to be an eyelash that slipped down your shirt) and most of those social interactions tend to be asking Sollux half-jovially half-seriously if he has killed himself yet.  
Kankri doesn’t pick up.  
You stare at the phone, as if all it needs is a good, long glare to get into contact with Kankri. Alright so the hour you have picked to call him is ungodly. You have no right to expect him to be awake at this hour, but it still seems completely unreasonable to you that he does not snatch up his phone this very instant. Again, you call him. Two more times. Every one of them a missed call. These calls are spanned out over about fifteen minutes, so he should have heard the phone ringing if he is in the house. Maybe he left it at home? Well, what about Cronus? Shouldn’t he have picked up?  
You try his phone three times.  
A bubble of creative curses in a mix of both of your languages builds in your throat. It’s actually a good thing that your father’s footsteps in the hall stop you before you can get a syllable out, because the words you were planning to use would have induced a heart attack in your sweet Catholic father. Multiple liver cirrhosis too. Like, so many problems, if your delicate father heard those noises.  
For his sake, you put your head under your pillow and pretend to be asleep.  
He opens the door “Motherfucking hell.”  
That’s new.  
“Bollocks.”  
To your surprise, he snatches your phone up off the nightstand and picks one of your contacts. To make his call, he stands outside your door. The stream of cusses coming out of your father’s mouth would make a sailor blush. This is actually amazing. He would just have to be using your only way of recording this moment, wouldn’t he?  
You wonder who he’s calling? Whoever he is calling is gonna get an earful they never expected from an ex-pastor.  
“Kankri, call me. I just saw your town on the news. This…this toxin in the water, I know it’s all over, but they’re saying your town has most of the fatalities. Please call me back.”  
His voice sounds thick the way you haven’t heard it since Grandma died.  
Next, he calls Cronus. He leaves a similar, if a million times more awkward message on Cronus’s phone.  
By the time he finishes that one, your eyes sting. You’re not really sure if these tears are from fear or just because you’re kind of over-whelmed by the emotion in your father’s voice. This is the man who watched Mufasa die without shedding a tear. Who laughed at the scene in ‘Lord of the rings’ where Gandalf plummets into that hell with that sweaty lava Satan-monster. Last but not least, who had essentially severed all forms of contact with his elder son on account of him sorta eloping to marry another guy after college- a move that was financed by Grandma, no less, who thought of Kankri and Cronus as her own private soap opera and was more than capable of funding their drama.  
And he’s crying?  
You didn’t think the man had tear ducts. You’ve been certain that he gave them up as a sort of sign of self-flagellation to God when he was entering the church. This is kind scary.  
Finally, you can handle the drama no longer.  
“Dad?”  
He jumps at the sound of your voice “Go back to bed Karkat.”  
“Fuck that. What’s going on?”  
He shakes his head “Just…just go back to bed. Nothing to worry about.”  
“I think it’s something to worry about. I have to hold a figurative gun to your head to get you to even talk to Kankri on the phone and I have to hammer out every single detail of the fucking travel arrangements by myself, and suddenly you’re all ‘ooh your parent loves you again let’s talk about your surprise husband’ to the point that you’re calling Mr Surprise Husband? And using my fucking phone to do it?”  
“I don’t have Kankri’s number.” he says dully.  
You don’t have the heart to keep on at him after that.  
A couple of moments pass in an uncomfortable silence as your father keeps calling again and again. He leaves no more voicemails, trusting that the volume of missed-calls Cronus and Kankri will find will suffice to show his fear. Eventually, you become aware of the drone of the TV in the background. You get up and go to the front room, being very careful not to look at your father as you go by.  
The news plays to the empty, darkened living room.  
You plant yourself in the armchair that is still wrinkled from your father’s occupation and watch. In your addled state, it is somewhat difficult to understand what is going, also considering that you have just walked in during the middle of the broadcast. A few choice phrases jump out at you.  
“…world-wide state of emergency…”  
“...entire populations of Tuvalu and Kirbas wiped out…”  
“…biological weapon or toxin or pollution is uncertain at this point, but all avenues are being thoroughly explored by the world’s leading scientists…”  
“…human tissue affected only, stumping the scientific community…”  
“…stay away from all water, any water, until told otherwise by the proper authority…”  
By the time you have heard enough, your eyes are swimming.  
Gamzee.  
You hadn’t even thought of Gamzee.  
Those pictures they showed of the victims- laid out in scores just like those stations where they stick tsunami survivors- they were horrific. Until you saw those, you had no reason to think that human flesh could ever become like a liquid.  
What if that’s Gamzee? And Kankri? And Cronus and Sollux and Equius and Nepeta and Aradia and everyone else you’re trying so hard to forget you care about because it’s just so, so much easier than missing them the way you do.  
“Dad! Is your stuff packed?”  
You turn to find him holding his suitcase in one hand, his jacket slung over the other arm while the phone is pressed to his ear.  
“Can I have my phone? I…Gamzee and them.”  
He hands it to you without a word and heads for the door.  
Your bag is packed, even though you’re not supposed to be leaving for another two days. To be honest, you were so excited (although you didn’t let yourself feel very much of it) at the thought of getting to see everyone and home again you honestly had to stop yourself from catching the earliest train down to see him. Isn’t that stupid? You’re only about 5 hours away by train and yet you have allowed yourself to fall into a kind of maniac system of crazed longing, self-punishment for said longing and finally a sort of deep, drowning bitterness at the world, for the world, and for everyone in it that hasn’t leapt to their feet to make you feel better and done it successfully.  
Gamzee doesn’t pick up. You try him four times, Sollux five times, Gamzee again, Equius and Nepeta twice each, Gamzee again, then you kind of freak out when you get to Aradia and call her fifteen times, your free hand moving automatically while the other packs the car quickly. You and your father move like you have just heard a volcano is headed your way and do it without exchanging a single word and avoid each other’s eyes.  
It is not until you are both packed into the front seat with minimal luggage that you find the courage to look at each other. Your father found the time to change into some jeans and a shirt, but you are still in your pyjamas. Both of you are pale, sallow from a lack of sleep and the fear taking a hold of you.  
“Do you think he’s ok?” you ask, your mouth dry.  
Your father’s face manages the improbability of being both grim and unreadable at the same time. He doesn’t speak at first, only squaring his shoulders and fixing his eyes on the grey cement drive. The car pulls out and sets off down the road without a word passing between the two of you.  
It is only when you arrive at the first stop-light that he speaks.  
“Karkat…when you get older, I want you to do yourself a favour. Unless your child kills a person or assaults them in cold blood, don’t cut them out of your life.”  
“I wouldn’t.”  
“I always thought I would love my sons no matter what they did or who they ended up with...”  
“Are you saying you don’t love Kankri anymore?” you ask, taking a cheap shot.  
He winces at that “I do…I let things get in the way of that. I let myself think that my beliefs are more important than my own son and…well, that’s just not an acceptable thing for an adult to do.”  
You don’t know how to process this.  
This is the first time you have heard anything like this, of course. First time you have even had the slightest hint that your father thinks he is anything but completely and 100% morally right compared to Kankri.  
“Dad, would you be saying this if you knew Kankri was alive?”  
To your surprise, he actually laughs “Not right now. Not just too you. This would probably bubble out of me over our first dinner together or something. Karkat, just promise me that if you ever have the fortune to have children, you won’t follow my example.”  
He passes you a tissue.  
You didn’t even notice that you were crying, that you have been since the car pulled out of the drive until you touched the tissue to your face.  
Now, you pull your knees to your chest and rest your forehead against them. You imagine the way it will play out. Pulling into Kankri’s drive in the early-ass morning, interrupting them, scaring the shit out of them, making them think that you’re the ones in the serious, deadly danger rather than them. Your father won’t wait to explain himself if he sees Kankri before Cronus. He’ll just hug his son hard and tell him what he told you and it’s all going to be alright.  
You’ll have a family again.  
It will be just like it was before. It will be better, because this time Kankri is married to his boyfriend and he doesn’t have to sneak out of the house after midnight just to get a kiss.  
Your friends will be fine, over-joyed to see you again, and maybe Gamzee will have magically solved all of those problems you left him to grapple with as they worsened.  
Yeah, and maybe pigs will fly straight out of your ass and solve world hunger.


	10. Brief showers of death expected all day - take an umbrella out with you

Your name is Sollux Captor and it has occurred to you that this might be the end of the world. Previous to this night, when you thought of the end of the world, your theories followed along the lines of zombie plagues and nuclear bombs and alien attacks. Escapism happens to be one of your favoured coping strategies, so you actually have some incredibly detailed contingency plans, should those scary things happen. Mostly, your plans concern rounding up the few friends that you can stand and of course your pseudo-parents (in your head, you have assigned them roles based on their skills and personalities, and found your survival team would actually be well-rounded and dangerous) for a road-trip across post-apocalypse America.  
Karkat lives about a day and a half’s drive away. You figure your group would reach him after a week or so of struggles and battle, and upon arriving at his house you’d find him holed up in the top floor with his father buried in the basement. Kankri and Karkat would be free to be brothers again, with the looming influence of their homophobic father gone. With Cronus, they could be kind of a family. You assume your own father would be dead at this point, but suspect that other parents, such as Darkleer Zahhak and Graa’ant Makara are as invincible in an apocalyptic fantasy as they seem to you in ordinary life.  
You’ve got it all planned, see?  
You just didn’t think that the apocalypse was going to come in the form of the water. Of the melting rain.  
How could you have seen this coming? Even in your twisted mind, how could you ever be demented enough to imagine a rain that melted the flesh that it touched?  
It started ten minutes ago. Lucky for you, you were already in Kankri’s car, tearing towards the town. That was keeping you busy enough. You’ve never been terribly good at driving, since you get distracted by anything and everything on the road. What’s worse is that Kankri’s car is fucking stick shift of all things. So while you’re struggling with the idea of Kankri being missing, Eridan dying of the pain you left him in and with the idea of mermaids in general, there is also a form of super-acidic rain sliming up your wind-shield.  
According to Nepeta, it doesn’t melt anything but the people.  
She has been chattering on your loud-speaker for about five minutes now, providing you with a live report of the apocalypse. She watches from her house. There must be at least some form of God or luck, because everyone you really, really care about in this town happens to be in that house right now. Aradia, Equius and Gamzee are all there. Aradia showed up to tell her about the burning ocean, with Gamzee in tow. You assume Equius was there already, since Nepeta and Equius live in each other’s houses.  
“…but enough about me and my problems, where are you right now?”  
She has just finished describing the death of a person outside. You don’t know why she is looking out the window, but you could hear the rest of them protest in the background as she went into each gory little detail. She must be going into some kind of weird shock that allows her to look at all of this without connecting with the reality of it. Or that might be down to the amount of video games she plays. You don’t know. Kankri would.  
“I don’t know. I can’t see any signs. The rain is coming down like, heavy as fuck, ok? But I’ve gotta be close. I’ve been driving for like ten minutes.”  
She sighs noisily “Are you sure you’re on the right road?”  
Dread knots your stomach. No, no you’re not, and there is no way to check you are. True, there are a scattering of dirt lanes that branch off the main road that passes Cronus and Kankri’s house, and it is entirely possible that you have turned onto one of these in your confusion.  
“I…there are no lights, Peta, I can’t really tell where I’m going.”  
“Oh yeah, the power went out,” she says casually “Like, all over. I think Eq’s about to bring ours back up. The generator, you know? But it’s super dangerous because he has to go outside to that little utility shed.”  
You actually shriek “Peta! What the fuck are you doing, letting him go outside?!”  
“I couldn’t stop him!” she protests “He’s in a rain-slicker, if that makes you feel better! I’m not happy about it either! Platonic love of my life risking his just so we can be terrified in the light instead of the dark! And there are about two centimetres between his skin and all this fucking acid, and you think I encouraged him? Fucking fuck no!”  
Aradia speaks in the background, garbled by static “He looks fine to me. Not melted.”  
Nepeta takes a deep, steadying breath “Listen, it’s totally not ideal for anyone. We’re in trouble, here, serious trouble. We’ve got no idea if our parents are alive.”  
“Is it melting the wi-fi now?”  
You can almost hear her rolling her eyes “Well maybe. The wi-fi went out and so did 3G and 4G. I can’t get through to anybody. I mean, Meulin is deaf, so there’s always the chance that her phone is buzzing away on a nightstand and she’s blissfully unaware. I just don’t know. Things will look better when you get here and we’ve got a way to get out.”  
After this, there is a moment of silence.  
From what Nepeta has told you, the streets were kind of full when the rain started. An emergency broadcast from the local radio station (you think they must have been alerted by one of Cronus’s academic team) told people the sea was poisoned, and in the spirit of the modern age, the bloggers and gawkers were out in full force when the clouds split.  
She says their skin steamed away. Then the muscles bubbled and popped like frying bacon. Then their bones kind of sagged and collapsed, splashing as they fell. She says the puddles have all combined into this sort of pinkish, greyish slurry that’s filling u the storm drains. Combined with the volume of water already falling, these drains have begun to back up and over-flow and spew into the streets. Long story short, the sewers are over-flowing with liquid human.  
People you’ve known your whole life and expected to know until you finally shook off the shackles of this hick town and made it out.  
The true horror has yet to catch up to you. You hope it won’t for a long time. You don’t want to think about what’s happening in the outside world, in places where people can’t shelter from the rain, where maybe the rain is also melting the buildings and the cars. About everyone caught outside right now.  
So you don’t.  
“Guess what?”  
She replies wearily “The roof of the car is corroded?”  
You laugh “I’m driving stick shift.”  
“What, really?”  
“Would I lie to you? We’ve got a delicate relationship, Peta. If I mess it up I stand to mess up our work-place too.”  
She laughs with only a slight hint of hysteria “You hear that, guys? Sol’s driving stick shift!”  
You hear Gamzee muttering “Shit’s impossible, bro. Gotta be some kinda driving wizard ta work that fucked up stuff.”  
“I love you guys, by the way.”  
Like you feel compelled to, they all burst into nervous laughter.  
“Where did that come from?” asks Nepeta “We know you do...is something wrong?”  
Yeah, something’s wrong. Your chances of surviving this are so much better than Equius’s, who is apparently outside with only a jacket to shield him. But like him, you’re surrounded by it. You have nowhere to hide. You have to look at that which will kill you if it touches you. On all sides, flowing all over your windows and the body of your car.  
And everyone you want to be with right now is far away. The closer you come to Nepeta and the others, the further it takes you from Eridan. Were you asked right now who you wanted to be with more, you couldn’t answer honestly.  
“Nah,” you have to wipe your eyes “Nothing’s wrong. I just…I’m just a little scared.”  
Nepeta doesn’t know what to say to that.  
So Gamzee takes over “Wanna hear some messed up shit?”  
“Equius is dead?”  
He scoffs “Nah, bro, s’bout me. It’s messed as motherfuck, bro. So, check it. Y’all know I got my dad and blood-bro and nothin’ else, yeah?”  
“Uh, yeah.”  
“Well it ain’t so. Turns out what I got me is a half-brother, an’ an old as balls nephew.”  
“Wait…what?”  
“My dad’s my nephew.”  
Your head swims “Gamzee, that’s not how it works.”  
“It is with my people. Listen ta this. So, I got me a big bro I didn’t know about, yeah? And we got a dad that’s old as balls, like, 90 or somethin’, and he got a fondness for the ladies. So he has him real early an’ that motherfucker goes off and has himself a life and has himself a bouncin’ ball a baby boy joy, an’ that’s my dad. Y’all followin’?”  
“Barely.”  
“What’s all this, Gamzee?” asks Aradia distantly “You didn’t tell me about this.”  
“Am now, sis. I was savin’ it fer a rainy day.”  
This prompts another of those nervous, grating laughs from the girls. Gamzee joins in, although it takes him a moment to identify the joke he inadvertently made.  
“So, my dad’s real young, like, college or some shit, an’ he gets a call from his grandfather sayin’ he’s got himself a son now. ‘Cept that son’s really the grandfather’s an’ he just don’t want ta take care ‘a him, so he sorta throws a buncha money at my dad an’, like, fuckin’ basket- in- the -river’s Loz, some real Moses-like shit all up in there. An’ dad can’t toss the poor shit away ‘cos Loz is jus’ a baby an’ he ain’t got nowhere else and no one else. So he takes Loz in. Y’all can guess what happens next.”  
You bite your bottom lip “Uh…you?”  
“Yeah, bro!” you can hear the smile in his voice “Yer right! I happen. Same shit, same thing! The grandfather just sorta threw us at the survivin’ member ‘a his clan, the one that couldn’t say no real well.”  
“You…so your dad is really some wrinkly old pervert and the guy…the guy we know, that’s your nephew?”  
“So I’m told. That weird, or what?”  
“Uh, yeah. That’s like the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard you say, GZ, and I’m counting your theory about who the Tooth Fairy really is.”  
“Ah, motherfucker, let’s not get back inta that one, please?”  
Nepeta and Aradia were struck momentarily speechless by Gamzee’s weird reveal, but they come back to life now. They sputter and flutter, their words mixing into an unintelligible blur in the background. You can hear them descend on Gamzee, patting and cooing at him. You’re so confused by his reveal, trying to figure out if he’s invented it to keep himself entertained and mixed it up with reality as he occasionally does, so you almost miss seeing the town.  
“Oh shit, I can’t see a thing!”  
“Where are y’all at?”  
You squint through the windshield, your wipers working frantically “I’m just on the main road. Three minutes from you Peta, maybe.”  
“Turn on your headlights!” suggests Nepeta “No one’s gonna bother you! Anybody outside is a puddle right now!”  
“I’m sure that makes him feel much better,” says Aradia drily “We’ll open the garage for you. Manually. Actually, we plan to make Equius do it because we’re all cowards-”  
“I’ll get it sister.” volunteers Gamzee.  
“You’re gonna die.” points out Nepeta “And your nephew-dad will have to catch your remains in a bottle and like, throw you out to sea Turkish style.”  
“Nepeta, that’s what Vikings do.”  
“So? The Turkish religious culture is a culture of propagation. They use figurines of the little mermaid in their ceremonies.”  
You can almost hear Aradia rolling her eyes “You’re thinking of Haitian voodoo. Oh shit, there goes Gamzee, shambling towards his death.”  
“Oh, wait, what if I splash him when I get in the garage?” a horrible new possibility occurs to you “How am I even going to be able to get out? The car’s all…watery.”  
“Hair-drier and extension cords?” suggests Nepeta distantly “Wait the fuck up Gamzee, let me tie your hair up!”  
Driving blind in a literal acid rain is not the most relaxing thing you’ve ever done. In fact, you’re not sure if it’s something you’ll ever recover from. What scares you is not the fact that there are dead people all around and the potential for a painful death is literally raining down from the sky- it’s that you can’t see it. But for your own headlights, the whole town is dark. Why is that? Why haven’t more people pulled out of their garage and made a break for it?  
So far your headlights have just rolled over the abandoned cityscape. There isn’t a single person that’s even appeared at the windows. You expect that people would be gathered in the glass-fronts of restaurants or watching the destruction from the few bay windows you can see, like Nepeta and Aradia will be.  
But you don’t see anyone.  
Until you see Nepeta. You’ve never found her more beautiful than you do now- kneeling on the window-seat with messy hair, a weird T-shirt proclaiming her support for some obscure cat charity and short-shorts so short you actually doubt her bottom half is dressed- and you’ll never find her this beautiful again. Her face lights up, both from joy and from your headlights.  
She waves frantically.  
You wave back and make a swipe at the tears that gather in the corners of your eyes as the garage door creaks slowly open.

Sollux Captor: be Cronus (just before the rain started) ======>  
Cronus Vantas: save your brother’s stupid life ======>

Your name is Cronus Vantas and you kind of hate Eridan right now.  
A long time ago, you had an ocean-fed saltwater pool built into the basement. It was a nightmare to install and weird to explain to the contractors (they seemed to think you and your husband would be using it for sex games and exchanged elbow-nudges and knowing smiles throughout the entire project), but you knew you’d need it someday. With the life you left behind and the terrible luck you’ve always been stuck with, it was inevitable that a mermaid would show up on your doorstep someday, or that the enchantment which transformed your own body would be reversed or damaged someday.  
This is where you’re taking Eridan now, to the saltwater pond. Whatever is in the water not hurt him. In fact, if this is the spell that you think it is, it will only rejuvenate him.  
The entire world is about to change. Some of it for the better, most of it for the worse. And it’s Eridan’s fucking fault.  
You know this spell. You know it takes one person years upon years to make, concentrate, strain and finally perfect. And you know it takes a second person to release the spell.  
Eridan did it. Eridan knew what he was doing when he did this and he did it anyway.  
“You fucking idiot.”  
His unconscious face is so troubled with pain and his nightmares you can barely bring yourself to be angry with him. The circumstances you’ve met your little brother under are terrible to say the least (apocalyptic to say the most). In an ideal world, he would have come across you and Kankri by chance, while you were walking the dog and he was spectacularly lost- does he still do that, get lost? You remember that when he was little, the palace was a maze to him and he sometimes needed help to get back to his own bedroom. And what about the summer when he had just reached nine summers, where he went missing for almost two months?  
Now you know where he was for that summer. With Sollux. That explains about half of what you mentally refer to as ‘the mysteries of Sollux’. An absent love. Someone who had taken his heart right out of his chest and run with it. You know the feeling well.  
“Eridan, you’re an asshole. You’ve killed so many of us…like, half of the world. You’re such an asshole.”  
The saltwater pond is behind a door marked ‘auxiliary generator’. You figure no one would ever investigate such a boring door. You kick the door open at the bottom. This door is rarely locked. Sure, Gamzee and to a lesser extent Sollux kind of live at your house, and bring with them a stream of charmingly obnoxious teenagers, but to the extent of your knowledge none of them have ever bothered to go into the basement. Let alone to check out the door at the back of the basement that leads to your secret sanctum.  
Even if they have, they have probably put what they found down to weird sex games.  
Behind the door is a surprisingly large room. Most of it extends beyond the house into the underground. The room is always filled with a garbling sound of water, created by the stream of water that runs in a channel in the floor to the pond. The pond itself is a raised pool lined with stones and moss and seaweeds that grew naturally (with your magical influence you suspect) and continue to flourish despite a lack of sunlight or a steady stream of artificial light. A notch has been cut in the raised pond where the water can flow away, into the continuation of the channel that carries the water from the room. You’re pretty sure the stream joins with the rest of the plumbing in the house at some point.  
And also not. You have no idea how this place works, but you know it was so damned expensive you’d’ve never been able to come close to affording it at this stage in your life without Grandma Rosa’s massive fortune to fall back on.  
When you came in, a series of lights mounted in the floor automatically came on. They bathe the small, curved room and the pond in a soft blue light.  
“Alright, asshole,” you heft his weight and step carefully into the pond, not caring that you soak your jeans “Let’s get your shit sorted.”  
You lower Eridan into the water. He is totally naked. Sollux’s jacket is slung over a chair in the kitchen. Eridan’s bare skin is turning an interesting array of purples and blacks thanks to innumerable bruises, to match the delicate purple tint to his skin. Way back in the early days of the transformation, you too had a purplish sheen to your skin. That soon faded, but every time you changed back into a mermaid for the summer, you got it back. Kankri noticed much earlier than he mentioned it. When he finally did admit that he had noticed your skin was purple, he whispered it across a damp pillow and flushed the colour of his own red blood as he added that he thought it was one of the prettiest things about you.  
Oh, gods. You can’t do this.  
No, fuck that. Yes you can.  
No you can’t. You want your husband back.  
Yes you can. He’s not coming back on his own.  
He might.  
No he won’t, shut up, optimism. No one’s interested in your unrealistic hope. You’re just thinking that because you’re lazy and cowardly. You can do this. You have to do this. ‘This’, being get to the bottom of the problem and fight whatever fight is headed your way. No one else will do it for you, after all.  
You submerge Eridan. Sure enough, a set of violet slits open up in the side of his neck. They flick open and shut, sampling the oxygen in the water. His lips part slightly and release a few bubbles. More bubbles are caught between his eyelashes. Especially under water, his face is remarkably like yours.  
You have the same forehead- what might be described as noble. You have the same longish nose and detached earlobes, just begging for the bite of the piercer’s needle with the wealth of space they offer. His hair is the same dark black, except he has just the slightest hint of dark blue towards his roots.  
“I see you out-grew that purple dye streak in your hair.”  
His mouth opens “Not by fuckin’ choice, mind ya.”  
A shiver runs through you. Eridan’s accent is unlike anything you have heard in a long time, except for the dreams about your old world. It’s so strange to hear it again. Out of your grown-up little brother’s mouth, no less.  
“Oh yeah? What did Pa do to ya, Eri? What did he threaten ya with unless ya changed that streak?”  
Eridan shifts in your arms. His heavy limbs have sunk, so he is only being supported by your arms around him. Mindful of this, you lift him to bring his face above the water. His eyes open to slits. He takes in the sight of you silently for a moment, then his lip begins to tremble and a warbling sigh filters through his gritted teeth.  
“I thought you w-were dead.” he manages.  
Your heart breaks for the second time tonight “I am, Eri. I’m dead as a doornail.”  
“Nah, but yer not. Pa made out that ya had been eaten by an orca. He said ya died fightin’, an’ he w-wouldn’t let me see the body ‘cos ya w-were in pieces when they found ya…I had so many dreams w-where ya w-were, w-were all torn up ‘an jus’ blood in the w-water…”  
He trails off. His eyes are filled with tears and wonder.  
Oh gods, you forgot about this. You forgot that your little brother idolised you in spite of himself. You forgot the way that he’d chase after you when you went out to do your stuff, how he’d cling and brag to anyone in the court who would listen about how he was going to be just like Cro (even better than Cro) when he got big.  
“I am dead, ok? When you go back home, you tell everyone I am dead.”  
Eridan’s face crumples “Ah, ya bastard! Ya don’t care, do ya? It killed me w-when he told me that! I thought- I thought ya w-were gone ferever! Ya don’t know-w w-what that did ta me!”  
You don’t really want to know, either. You can’t absorb much more pain tonight.  
There is nothing you can say. So instead of speaking, you just cradle him to you. His body is now that of a mature mer, but it feels just like when he used to wriggle into the your recupracoon in the middle of the night. You rock him gently and hold him close.  
He sniffs pathetically. He does not cry, though.  
“Ya need ta listen. It’s all gone ta shit, Cro. Home’s gone ta shit. She’s back.”  
Your heart sinks “Oh yeah?”  
Eridan looks up at you, his eyes fearful “It’s the w-war all over again.”

Cronus: become College!Kankri =========>  
College! Kankri: fall hard in love ========>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was finally finished on a full stomach of cake and a home-cooked Southern meal. A delicious and terrible idea.


	11. Plot? Who needs a plot? Let's flashback.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excuse the massive delay between updates.There was an incident and a laptop was broken, so I had to get another one but couldn't until i got back from places, ect, ect, messy, messy.  
> I will be updating regularly from now on

Kankri Vantas: are you in love yet? ==========>

Um, maybe?  
It’s somewhat difficult to discern the truth of your feelings, partially because you’re not sure of the feelings on the other end of this relationship. You think this is deliberate on Cronus’s part.  
It has been close to a month since you kissed him by the canal. Imagine your surprise when he didn’t push you away! At the very least, you expected to be pushed into the canal for your inappropriate advances! Even now, you can barely justify the foray into Cronus’s personal space to yourself.  
Why did you do that? More importantly, why did he accept?  
At first, you thought it was because he was being polite. He returned the favour because you had taken him under your wing (boiling up to this moment all along, you know, your intentions were far from pure), and once he had gotten past this awkward moment he was going to make his excuses and slip out of your life. Perhaps to those horrible stoners next door. Well, it was nothing you hadn’t brought upon yourself. You should have given him warning. You should have been a gentleman- no, a civilised person- and addressed your affections honestly, instead of flinging yourself at him in the dark gutter that ran along the canal.  
But when the initial kiss was over and you began to draw back, formulating your apologies, you found that Cronus would not let you go. Instead, he kissed you several more times. Chaste, almost curious kisses. They reminded you of your first kiss, centuries ago back in your home town. Terrified, but eager to see what it felt like to be pressed against another boy the way you longed to be.  
So it went from one kiss to several. But his hands never roamed from your shoulders, except once to frame your face for a better angle. He just kissed you and kissed you and kissed you. You weren’t complaining.  
Until he seemed to remember himself and drew back all at once. He apologised, but he was not ashamed. He was bewildered. He didn’t know why he had kissed you. He still doesn’t.  
Then, it was a simple matter of brushing off the apology and the whole thing entirely, as if he had never clasped you to him. The walk back home was only quiet for a few moments. Cronus found something else to talk about, but for the life of you, you cannot remember what it was or how you responded. You only remember watching his mouth move and letting your mind take that and wander to whatever filthy place it wanted to wander to.  
The next day was not so simple. The next day, the two of you had to see each other in broad daylight and think about what you had done while playing innocent. And of course, Latula had decided the night before that she was going to draw Cronus into the fold of her friendship group. She wanted you to spear-head the effort. Even though you’d been pressed against another person in the dark less than 12 hours prior, you found you couldn’t say no to her. Or look at her for too long without growing ashamed and embarrassed.  
Surprisingly, Cronus obliged. He let himself be dragged into your group. He ate lunch with your group that day and got to know them. He wasn’t reserved or quiet either; loud, friendly and good at making the others laugh. Charming, like he had studied it. Really, his behaviour was the textbook of how a friendly, well-rounded and secretly troubled (but only by the menial, every day troubles that assail most people at this age) college student should behave.  
At the same time, you couldn’t escape the feeling that he was observing as well as interacting. Not to see who was who in the group, but something deeper. Like Jane Goodall with the apes. Dian Fossey, mimicking the dominant silverback (Porrim, probably?) to get closer to the ape children (and that would be the whole group, as Porrim presides as the mother of you all). You were the only one who noticed, you’re sure. You have yet to say anything about it.  
But you notice it more and more every day.  
Now that you see him every day, as a part of your circle of friends and an illicit thrill in dark places between classes, you realise how strange he really is.  
Cronus does not quite seem to know what to do in this world. He will wait and watch, for example, when it comes to ordering in restaurants, then copy it perfectly, as if it is as normal for him as it is for the rest of you. There are scores of examples you can think of off the top of your head.  
Before he saw Loz cat-call a girl across the street, he never did it. After that, he was happy to join in when the others did, or start himself when he sensed the situation was appropriate. Until Latula linked arms with him, he had never casually touched the girls. He was alright with the boys, but the girls seemed to be alien to him in some special way, just for their gender. Even after she did that, he was very careful about touching them, as if afraid of breaking some delicate social barrier he was unaware of.  
Cronus lives on thin ice. He navigates it slowly, aware of the cold depths beneath him that he will plunge into at the most innocent mistake.  
You wonder if he knows it too? You often wonder if you have imagined and projected all of these strange behaviours onto him, just because you’re paranoid about the way he acts around you. That is not to say that Cronus avoids you. No, he actively seeks your company. Mostly, it is in the company of others. But occasionally, he will get you on your own. He becomes coy, reluctant to come close. You recognise this for what it is- just plain shyness because he kissed you and he’d like to do it again, but he’s afraid of how you’ll react.  
So every kiss since (and there have been plenty) you have instigated. Still, his hands do not wander. He’s perfectly respectable every time. While your bodies may often be pressed together, he never does anything with the proximity. Apparently, Cronus is content just to be sealed to your mouth and close to you.  
This is both heart-warming wildly frustrating. In high-school, this might have satisfied you. But in college? No way.  
Sure you want to have a deep, meaningful relationship, and you would be thrilled to experience one with this strange boy. You want to be understanding. You want to give him time to become comfortable.  
But you also want to get laid.  
How long has it been since Brian Kramer? Not long enough to dull the sting of shame and sadness you feel every time you think of him, but quite some time in terms of how long it has been since ‘doing it’. You’re human. You’re a male human in the peak of youth and you have certain needs that are not being satisfied by your current relationships. It’s gotten to the point that you’re starting to imagine what Loz would be like in bed.  
Now that is a bad sign. Actually, you’re sure that Loz would be happy to show you, assuming no strings attached and if he didn’t have Meulin already in his life. But Meulin exists, they’re happy together and you don’t really want to fuck your best-friend for relief from your libido that will only be temporary.  
You want to be with Cronus. You really do. You want him more than most of your former crushes, (Brian Kramer, celebrity and otherwise) put together.  
What remains is to tell him that. And you’ve got no idea how to do that. Basically, no idea whatsoever. It’s not that you just don’t know how to tell him you’d like to date him seriously without making him uncomfortable…you don’t know how to ask him out, period. All of your previous relationships have been furtive in some manner or another. Whether it was sneaking in and out of your sort-of boyfriend’s house in your home-town or picking out a candidate for a brief, messy encounter in an unfamiliar apartment (you have never taken a one-night-stand back to your place, owing to the fact that that would have been college dorms or your uber-Catholic father’s house), the preparations were always sneaky and done in the dark. It still seems to you in many ways that you’re afraid.  
You’re out, sure, but not to your home-town. If you were still living by the coast, in the town where Karkat left all of his friends and most of your friends have come from, you would be. No problem. That town loves you. You lived there all the way up to your seventeenth birthday, until your father upped sticks to get away from his church, staggering on its last legs and determined to take him down with it. Upon being tugged out of your former high-school where your friends stayed, you retreated into your shell as if sucked inwards by an implosion.  
Two weeks into your move, your books were still scattered in a sea of boxes, so you headed off to the local library and checked out a batch of books. A book sneaked in- a slim volume of romance by David Leviathan nestled in the pages of a graphic novel. Suddenly, a lot of things made sense. The word was ‘bisexual’, so you did not feel entirely disloyal to your far-flung love (Latula, living in your childhood home blissfully unaware of your affections) for double-taking when a guy in particularly tight jeans strolled by. Brian Kramer happened and that was it for the myth of your heterosexuality.  
It was all very secretive. As such, you have no idea how to ask anyone out. How to be in a relationship that requires more than the odd encounter in the backseat of a car and a few wistful glances flicked at the back of your crush’s head during class.  
That is why you are still unsure if you are in love.  
It seems plausible. After all, you know what love feels like from your longing from Latula. This is somewhat different, however, because it feels good rather than corrosive. What you have for Latula stings a little less every day, as what you have for Cronus grows stronger. His smile is a magnet to yours. You have only to catch a glimpse of him for your heart to swell and leap. When you speak to him, your tongue stumbles over itself and your pulse quickens, as if you have just run a marathon. Often, you stumble away from a kiss with him as flushed as if you have just broken through the tape at the finish line.  
Best or worst of all, you dream of him constantly. Strangely, most of your dreams take place on the beach, with Cronus standing up to his waist in the surf and beckoning to you. Each time you move to join him, he moves further into the water, looking like every step breaks his heart a little more. You’ve often reached water to deep to touch the floor by the time you wake up. And then there are the more pedestrian, filthy dreams too. You much prefer those. At least you don’t wake up with the burn of tears in your eyes after those.  
It is the dreams that have convinced you to take further steps. Towards Porrim’s door, that is. She’s the smartest person you know when it comes to affairs of the heart. You watched her tame Damara Megido, after all, who is a veritable Indiana Jones when it comes to stealing hearts.  
Porrim leaves her door open whenever she is in, unless she’s in the shower or Damara is also in. Still, you feel it appropriate to knock, considering the solemnity of the occasion.  
Porrim looks up, alarmed “Why so formal, Kanny?”  
Normally you just walk in and plunk yourself on the chair or the bed- whichever one is free.  
Meulin, too, is concerned. She glances between the two of you and somehow gauges what’s coming by scenting the atmosphere.  
“I’ll go,” she offers, gathering some textbooks into a bag “To the library. Drop me a text when you guys are done talking.”  
Neither of you try to stop her from going. She gives you a gentle shove into the room, closing the door behind you.  
Porrim pats the mattress beside her “You look scared.”  
You shrug “I am, a little.”  
She throws an arm around your shoulders and draws you into her side, when you take your place “Is it getting too hard? The whole fiasco with the L-word?”  
In the past, it is likely Porrim would have guessed right. Now the suggestion makes you want to laugh. That all seems so distant now, the emotions faint and flat.  
Assuming she is right when you don’t respond, she continues “I know it’s tough, honey, but frankly so is the truth. She’s just not into you. She never was and never will be. I know you’re sick of hearing the old rigmarole from me, but I’m gonna say it one more time. It’s Mitula, not Lakri.”  
Finally, you find your voice “And what do you think of Cronkri?”  
Her mouth forms a perfect, black-lipstick O. Porrim’s dark eyes go wide with a combination of shock and joy as the news sinks in. You keep a straight face, bracing yourself.  
She recovers sufficiently to slap you hard, between the shoulder-blades, and let out an almost villainous cackle “Just when I think you’re done surprising me!”  
You shrug again, your cheeks afire “Surprised me too.”  
Porrim wraps her arms around your waist and squeezes you like a plush toy “And here I was thinking you’d be mooning after Madame Rad for the rest of your natural life! You’re serious? You’re not just trying to make me feel better about you being so heart-sick?”  
“No, of course not!” you are scandalised “You think I’d invent this to make you feel better about my problems? Porrim, I am not that selfless.”  
She howls with laughter “Oh my God, you really do like him? You like Cronus?”  
She’s being so loud. Remembering how thin the wall between you and Cronus is, you panic a little and put a pillow over her face to muffle her mirth. She barely struggles. Instead, she flops back on the covers and squirms, utterly delighted.  
“I think you’re a little too happy about this.” you frown.  
“Don’t you tell me how to feel about this, Kankri Vantas. Four years you’ve been hung up over that woman! That’s over 900 days of awkward moments with Latula because I know something juicy and painful that she doesn’t! God only knows how many times I had to persuade you not to pour your heart out all over her! Well, Kanny, I love you like crazy, but I was getting so sick of being your counsellor.”  
Feeling a stab of guilt, you lay a hand on her shoulder “Thank you for dealing with me for as long as you have.”  
She sits up to hug you “Honey, you’re like cigarettes and tight dresses. I know you make me look trashy as hell, but I just can’t give you up. So, give me the details.” she grows serious, although her manic grin stays firmly in place “How the hell was the miracle I’ve been praying for finally delivered to you?”  
That stumps you for a moment.  
How the hell did you fall in love? It just sort of happened. No great epiphany. No dramatic moment when you stared into his eyes and he stared back and it all clicked into place. None of that.  
You just knew you liked him one day, then the next day you knew you would like to fall in love with him. You’d say it’s still far too early into the relationship to call it love- you hardly know the first thing about each other, after all.  
You relate this sentiment to Porrim.  
She nods “I know what you mean. Me, well that’s how it went with Damz. One minute I knew I liked her and wished she was easier on herself and the rest of us, and the next moment I want to throw her on the bed and ravish her like the days of the Wild West.”  
She sees the face you pull and adds “Don’t me such a prude, Kanny.”  
“Well, since you’re the expert, what did you do?”  
Porrim smiles “What do you think? I slept with her. Damara was sleeping with everyone she could get her hands on back then. Then I convinced her to go out on a date with me and the rest is history.”  
You roll your eyes “Not to me, Porrim. I left in the middle of the fall-out of your hook-up.”  
That was one of the only times Porrim has ever run to you with a problem. She turned up on your doorstep, still dishevelled from her busy night, and tied up your shower for an hour. She had you stand outside the door as she related the goriest details and her wishes to dissolve into the crust of the earth, scrubbing her skin until the smell of Damara was gone from her. Luckily, your father was out (making preparations to move, as you would soon discover) and mercifully, Karkat slept through it all, so he has no idea that Porrim had a melt-down, half-naked and soaked on his bathroom floor.  
God, are you glad that you haven’t come to her like that.  
Porrim is right. She deserves way less drama from you than she gets.  
“Well, why don’t you sleep with him? Everyone is up for it in college.”  
You have a feeling she is testing you “Because…I suppose I feel that would be improper.”  
She cocks a pierced eyebrow “Oh yeah?”  
She is testing you. Clever woman- she wants to make sure this a deep, abiding feeling, not some flavour-of-the-week affection that whipped itself up into a bigger deal than it is. Well, that’s fine with you. You should have to work to win back Porrim’s belief in you, when it comes to the purity and healthiness of your romantic inclinations. She has had to work too hard to keep you happy, throughout this long ordeal with Latula. The end that is in sight is as much of a relief to her as it is to you.  
Stumbling over your words, you continue “While I may not be entirely, well, convinced, um, I mean certain, of the truth of my…my urges…no, my emotions in…in Cronus’s general direction, I do know that this has the feel of something real…something deserving of my immediate and serious attention. But I also know that I don’t want to cheapen it with casual sex. Besides, I don’t think Cronus is that kind of person.”  
“What kind do you mean? He’s not religious about sex, is he?”  
You draw in close, as if sharing a delicious secret “No, Porrim. I mean I don’t think he’s a Wild West type.”  
She laughs “Well then, proceed with caution, I’d say. Good on you for holding your breeder instinct down for so long. Cronus is seriously hot.”  
You nod, your mouth dry “Incredibly so. Have you seen him in those black jeans?”  
“If I weren’t a married woman, I wouldn’t be able to look away.”  
Porrim is fond of referring to herself as such, despite the lack of a ring of any kind on her fingers. She also enjoys making observations about the attractiveness of her boy-friends and any exemplary examples of the male sex she passes on the streets, even though she is most decidedly a lesbian only.  
She looks at you for a long moment “I had a feeling this would happen. I mean, I was hoping it would.”  
You are confused “Me and Cronus? Am I really so obvious?”  
She shakes her head “It’s just that it’s kind of…well, meant to be, I would say. He appears out of nowhere, on nobody’s radar. He’s beautiful, he’s smart, he’s fun and he smells like the ocean. I mean, as far as we can tell, Cronus Ampora is perfection. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of ugly things about him if you guys do date, but it’s just…well, it’s like he was dropped into your lap, isn’t it? Your karma paying its dues for all those good things you did in high-school.”  
You shudder at the thought of your younger years “You mean like belch detailed, prepared scripts of my immaculately prepared opinions to anyone who remarked on the weather to me?”  
Porrim takes your hands in hers “Kanny, you weren’t the only person who needed a little bit of help to get through high-school. Listen, I want you to jump on this. Obviously in a way that doesn’t send Prince Charming running for the hills, but try not to let him get away.”  
“We have kissed, you know.”  
Her eyes brighten “Really? When? I thought you were glowing!”  
“Glowing?”  
“It’s like what pregnant women have, except for boys who are happy kissing and crushing on other boys.”  
You can’t help but glance at yourself in the mirror, and see that she is right in a way.  
You haven’t seen yourself smiling so easily in a long time.


	12. The return of Tentaboo, and others

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's so cold in Queensland. Seems like it should be illegal to have winter in Australia.   
> The houses are always colder than the outside.

Your name is Sollux Captor and somehow, you are surviving the night.  
Oh there have been some scary moments. Like getting Eq back inside once he had restored the lights. For a couple of moments, it was an absolute truth in your head that you were about to watch a childhood friend be melted into a twitching puddle of muscle and sweat- no, no you can’t say that anymore, now that he’s had his hormone treatments for the hyperhidrosis, the condition is but a fondly quoted memory (he got in fine and shed his coats without incident). Like when Gamzee heard a noise upstairs and sparked a serious debate about whether there was a serial killer trapped in here with you, or worse, a leak that was going to bring the whole ceiling and a flood down on your heads, and who should go check it out (Ida was picked because she loves to live vicariously).  
Like when Nepeta suggested that the water in her tap might be poisoned like the water outside. Then God one of you was smart enough to think of tossing a shred of organic material under the water that wasn’t attached to your body- namely, a raw drumstick that just lay limp and solid under the water when it hit. Gamzee, being the tactless wonder he is, had the audacity to scare the crap out of the whole room by suggesting that maybe, just maybe, because he had seen a cat earlier that was strolling through the people-puddles without trouble, it only worked on people. Seeing the alarm that he had caused in a room of parched throats, he then took it upon himself to test his theory and had his finger in the water faster than Eq could tackle him down.  
Once Eq had rolled off him, Gamzee held his undamaged finger triumphantly in the air “See? Ain’t no motherfuckin’ thing. Eq, not that I’m gettin’ ta bein’ no whinin’ bother’r nothin’, but yer knee’s in my lungs.”  
With that question answered, everyone relocated to the living room with tall glasses of water.  
You are past caring about what’s going outside at this point, sprawled out on the couch with your feet in Ida’s lap. When you try to cast your mind to the outside world, you can only think of Eridan and Eridan’s lips on yours and how Eridan spent the best part of the day gathered into your side, naked, silent and seething with pain. And how much you want to be near him right now. And his lips.  
Meanwhile, the others are determined to talk apocalypse.  
Nepeta, like you, has some extensive plans for the end of the world “…and the point I’m getting at is that we’ve already got our brawler slash mechanic, our weapons expert and our brains, and our driver. I can double up as the speed fighter and the mascot, and we all know that the weapon expert Gamzee’s gonna die first, so all we need now is a leader.”  
She illustrates her points in the broad, sweeping gestures she uses when nervous. Equius is of course, offended by both her attempt to make light of the situation and her suggestion that he might be a brawler. He catches her hands and squeezes them gently, speaking in that slow, reasonable way of his. His voice is permanently set on the tone: ‘coax the scary, wounded animal out of the corner’.  
“It stings me to think that you’re so sure I would be the brawler. May I ask as to the evidence you have to support this…this…”  
“Slanderous conjecture?” she suggests sweetly.  
“That’ll do, yes. Well? Do you?”  
“Your biceps, honey. They’re the real scandal around here. Go on, flex.”  
Eq gives a theatrical sigh and flexes one arm, bringing up the kind of muscles that most teenage boys can only long after over the pages of men’s magazines.  
“Point proven.” announces Nepeta.  
“I concur.” says Ida “Do the other one.”  
He does the other one and Ida sighs almost hungrily, which makes Eq tug his sleeves down over his arms and fold them self-consciously.   
“Why do I hafta die first?” asks Gamzee idly “Only, ain’t I made all useful’n such by bein’ the weapons guy? An’ why am I the weapons guy?”  
“’Cus you dad’s scary as fuck and the police commissioner and I know you can shoot.”  
“That is true.” says Eq loyally.  
Gamzee’s face clouds “No it ain’t. He’s my nephew, he ain’t my father.”  
Even you, with your mind on Eridan’s new legs, join in the groan that goes up.  
“What does that even mean Gamzee?” you ask “I’ll give you credit for trying to be funny, but not for fucking keeping on at it when people have gone from confused to scared.”  
Gamzee actually rolls his eyes, which you didn’t know he knew how to do, let alone do sarcasm at all “Brother, Sol, my motherfucker, I ain’t kiddin’. What the fuck is even funny ‘bout sayin’ that, my bro? Like, where does the laughs come in, there?”  
“That’s what we’re trying to determine.”  
“Aw, Eq, not y’all too. I’m bein’ all hells kindas serious here, motherfuckers. He ain’t my dad in the biological speakin’ kinda way. Only my nephew.”  
“So what does that make Loz?” asks Ida triumphantly, thinking she is about to bring Gamzee back to reality.  
He rolls his eyes again. Freaky when he does it. You didn’t think Gamzee was smart enough to know how sarcasm works “My half-brother, sister. Duh.”  
“Not duh,” objects Nepeta “But also not important. I still need a leader for our rag-tag team of wayward…wayward vagabonds.”  
“Cronus?” suggests Eq “I’m sure he could double up as a medic and Kankri could help us with the massive amounts of PTSD we will undoubtedly be shouldering as the end of the world goes on.”  
Your stomach swoops at the mention of Kankri.   
Has Cronus found him yet? Surely, Cronus, being Eridan’s brother, would know the same things about the sea that Eridan knew. He will be inside by this point, right? And as for Kankri, well, Kankri knows what Cronus knows, right? Their marriage seems too solid to have as big as lie as the truth of Cronus’s heritage standing between them. Kankri will have found shelter by now. He’ll be fine, wherever he is, and you can all laugh about this tomorrow, together, in whatever is left of the outside world.  
Your mind moves on from them quickly, back to Eridan.   
Gamzee, for some unknowable reason, protests against Eq’s suggestions “Kan and Cro are fine guys, but they ain’t leaders…Karkat’s the leader.”  
For the second time in almost as many seconds, your stomach drops to the very bottom of your ribcage.  
Silence falls. Well, not silence. More like a sound-vacuum which the drumming of the incessant rain rushes to fill.  
Ida, the bravest as usual, is the first to speak again “Does anyone have his number?”   
“It’s been changed, I’m sure.” says Eq.  
She cups her face in her hands and sighs “Does anyone have anything?”   
Nepeta is downcast “No.”  
“What the fuck’re y’all so down ‘bout?”  
Everyone looks at her.  
“Oh I don’t know. Maybe that the world is ending and we can’t even get in contact with our siblings, not to mention, um, former friends who kind of, kind of fucked off when stuff got tough and there was a time difference in the way and…I’m not worried about that fucking tool, and don’t you make the mistake of thinking he’s worried about us. We haven’t heard from him in two years. He’s an asshole, Gamzee, just a straight up asshole.” Nepeta folds her arms and turns her nose to the ceiling “I don’t care if he’s Kankri’s brother or not.”  
Eq reaches over and threads an arm around her shoulder, drawing her into his side “Yes you do.” he says bluntly “And that’s alright. First thing tomorrow, we’ll find Kankri and get his new number. How does that sound?”  
Her frown wavers “You can ask. I’m not asking. He’s an asshole.”  
During exchanges like these, Nepeta and Eq seem to forget there are other people in the room. In the world, even. You often wonder how such an intense, platonic relationship can be maintained with all the social pressure that surrounds boy-girl friendships, how they’re supposed to lead up to dating or no-strings sex. Then again, Eq and Nepeta have been friends since they were too small to understand what crushes are, and both of them are unlikely to let something as small as societal and peer pressure to get in the way of their hanging-out the way they want to.  
You wish you and Ida had been that strong. Even now, there is some residual awkwardness left over from that disastrous foray into romance. You may be sitting here, comfortable as a king on his throne with your feet in her lap, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the two of you can make eye contact for an extended period of time.  
“Karkat is an asshole,” says Gamzee unexpectedly “But asshole or no, I got me a feelin’ that he’s gone be fine when this shit blows the fuck over. We all gone be fine- the ‘rents an’ the sibs an’ all. We gone pull through. We pulled through everythin’ else.”  
There are an unusual amount tragedies your group can lay claim to. Gamzee begins to count them off on his fingers anyway.  
“When Kat moved away, we were fine, an’ when Loz an’ Meulin an’ Tuna an’ Tula all had their accident, we were fine, an’ when Ms Captor died, we were all fine, an’ when Tuna died we were fine, an’ when…”  
He stops and looks at you, belatedly, and pats your knee.  
Your throat grows thick. Miraculously, you manage the asshole-ish, disinterested tone of voice you are aiming for “Love you too, you nutcase.”  
“Don’t forget about my father,” offers Nepeta casually.  
“Or my mother,” adds Eq “Or Ida’s father. Come to think of it, we are an exceptionally unfortunate group of individuals.”  
“The sweetest fruit ripens under adversity.” says Ida sagely.  
For the first time all night, Eq cracks a smile “Who said that?”  
She shrugs “Me, but I get the feeling I’m crossing and fucking up a lot of actual famous quotes.”  
You have to laugh.  
And the rain pours on.

 

Cronus Vantas: are you a widower yet? ============>

Fuck. You hope not.  
No, Kankri is not hurt, wherever he is.  
Where he is may be, at this point, marginally worse than death. As an experienced griever, you do not say that lightly. And as a hunter, you do not take death lightly either.  
Without your permission, some of the science about the world you used to entertain as a younger man has come back. That stuff about grazers and killers and spikey worms that looked like leaves. It amazes you how little you really knew about life and the way it worked, back then, to think that everyone could be made to fit into two snug categories. Had you for some reason returned to the sea and assumed the throne the way you are supposed to, you would have been the shittiest Emperor to park your scaly ass on that seat.  
If man-child Cro’s way of thinking really was true of the world, then you’d think of Kankri as being one of those pathetically innocent grazers, trapped in the grips of the killers. Prey ad predator. Gods know that man-child Cro would have been happy to have Kankri removed at any time before your first date, no matter how much he really was in love with Kankri at that point. It scared him to be made to feel the way Kankri made him feel- open to the world, less afraid of them and of himself and just less scary and powerful in general. More like a normal mer, or a normal human, just living rather than questing.   
Man-child Cro didn’t like that. Then again, man-child Cro at that point was so uneducated in the ways of this world that he thought those spikey worms were actually a kind of stage between animal and plant; a missing link, if you will, kind of like those fish-men he knew liked to haunt black lagoons, especially when pretty women were around to be victimised. But part of growing up is learning the proper terms and categories for things.  
Spikey worms are in fact, insects called caterpillars, and Mother Nature would be delighted that that particular trick of evolution had you so thoroughly flummoxed for about a month and a half.  
Likewise, Kankri is in fact, not a grazer, nor a killer. He is some kind of dangerous hybrid and he can handle pretty much anything the mer-world wants to throw at him.  
It doesn’t matter who has him captive at the moment- and you strongly suspect both your father and the Exiled Condense, as each of them could be using him to draw you back into the water. Kankri can handle it. Kankri’s hard-core. Kankri’s intense.  
Kankri’s your fucking husband and you did not marry a wimp.  
Not that it would be unusual for even the most weathered of mer criminals, someone who knows what to expect, to cave under the pressure and the fear both your father and the Exiled can exude. But still, it’s Kankri. A part of you is a little more afraid for the Exiled or your father- whichever one it turns out to be who abducted him.  
You lie on your back, spread out on the couch. Eridan dozes in and out of consciousness in the salt-water stream, and you have left the door open in case he starts to have a nightmare or calls out to you. Having your brother in the house again, in fact, just anywhere near you, is kind of disturbing and pleasant at the same time. The fact that he brought his freshly transformed ass into your house is kind of violating as well, but that’s not fair on Eridan.  
Still, you can’t help but think that if Eridan wasn’t in your basement, Kankri might be cuddled into your side right now. The ring clutched in your hand might still be on his finger, where it belongs.  
Come to think of it, he hasn’t taken it off since he got it, except to wash dishes or to swim. He’s always been paranoid that the water is somehow going to rip it away from him. A poetic sentiment, considering where you were born. But also a useless one, until today, as you always told him he had nothing to worry about, between you being here to protect him and his personality being what it is.  
Because you weren’t there to protect him and he couldn’t get away by himself, the dog is settled on your lap instead of your husband.  
Eridan hasn’t seen a dog yet, and you thought it best to keep her close to you in case she decides to go and mess with him. This way, at least you can introduce Eridan to the first of many weird animals he will have to become accustomed to to pass himself off as a human.  
You shut your eyes and think of Kankri.  
How you were so sure that you were going to kill him, every time you saw him, that each word out of his mouth was going to be the kelp that broke the whale’s back. How you kept listening and never really wanted to stop- and never really have.  
What were your plans, anyway? Man-child Cro was inexperienced in the realm of deep personal relationships, but he was actually a clever thinker and a good tactician. Where were you going to dump the –oh that’s right. In the canal, weighted with stones.  
You rub your free hand through the dog’s fur absently.  
What were you going to do when the authorities came around? Unlike the world you were born in, people getting randomly eaten or killed is not a common occurrence. It is something to write home about- something to base the entire letter around, in fact, instead of adding it as a mere footnote.   
You remember now, actually. You were going to pull one of those invisibility glamours over your head and disappear from the collective consciousness until it was safe to resurface…  
Wait a second.  
Wait a fucking second.  
You lift the heavy dog off your legs and make a dash upstairs, for the bedroom.  
Kankri made the bed before he left, which breaks your heart a little bit. Slipping his ring into your pocket, you go over to the closet that takes up a whole wall and throw the doors open.   
Your suit, his suit, his shirts mixed with your shirts, your shoes, his shoes- there it is.  
From the top-shelf, you pull a dusty shoebox. Wiping the dust off the top, you are encased in the smell of dust and old, stale salt. The box has been taped shut with several layers and a chain of some kind of leather (whale leather, which sounds exactly as hard to make as it sounds implausible) looped around it three times altogether. A tarnished charm made of stone hangs from the leather.   
You doubt anyone else would be able to, but you can feel the charm’s potency rolling off it like a static charge. Your own magic. Damn, you were pretty frigging powerful back in the day. You wonder- would you be able to pull off even the simplest of spells?  
As the shoebox full of your old mer paraphernalia suggests, when you decided to take Kankri’s surname you also took his people’s cumbersome, decidedly unmagical way of living. Warts and all. Gods, do you wish you could use it sometimes. Just to speed time a little bit or repair something you have broken (you’re always doing that- you’re a clumsy fuck on dry land), but you always run the risk of alerting any passing mers of your presence. The magic of the should-be emperor of the sea would not go unnoticed, no matter how young or incompetent the mer is.  
That’s why this is extremely dangerous.  
You grip the charm and tear it away in one smooth, swift motion. The leather cuts into your palm as it whips away, winding taut around your arm and hand until your hand is all but engulfed in the leather. The tape withers and falls from the sides in the next instant, then the lid of the box begins to smoulder. A little belatedly, you lean back, just in time to watch a gout of flame erupt from the box, catapulting the lid towards the ceiling in the second it has left to it before it turns to ashes.  
Then the flame sort of folds back in, leaving only the faint smell of soot in the air.  
A faint, pulsating glow spills from the bowels of the box.  
You run a finger over both of your eyebrows to confirm that you still have them “Note ta self. Don’t leave magic rottin’ fer three years again.”  
Gods, listen to what your accent is doing. Pinging all over the place again.  
Cautiously, you peer into the box. It’s about as deep as you remember, which is good. As long as the little pocket of the dream bubbles you have claimed for your stuff doesn’t expand, you are essentially safe. It’ll be bad news if this stuff ever starts to bleed into other pockets, or gods forbid, dreams. But the worst seems to be on its way to happening, so you kind of don’t care at this point.  
Without a care in the world for your own safety, you reach into the swirling little sag of light at the bottom of the shoebox and begin to fish out what a younger, unmarried Cronus stuffed down there.  
A surprising amount of it is jewellery.   
Not frivolous or flashy stuff, like Meenah would have undoubtedly salvaged if she were eloping. Functional, simple, magical stuff. Charms galore. Enough heavy-duty talismans to keep you from being so much as scented by any mer patrol that might wash up on your home shore. In fact you remember there was a time when you had to use some of these to hide from a patrol that came up to look for you, shortly after the ‘death’ you staged.   
It was these two necklaces that were the most useful. They are twin talismans, made of a simple, green cord of kelp treated so that it hardens like rock and never degrades, strung with another of the smooth rock charms, like the one in your hand from the cord that shut the box. These two are in the vague shape of a clam shell, which is meant to symbolise either hiding or concealed treasure. You were notoriously shit at remembering the symbolic meaning for things in your very own religion and mythology. They were fond of saying you couldn’t tell a Cthulhu from a squid, which wasn’t necessarily true.  
While you may not understand the subtle meanings behind the magic you used, you understand what does what and how to make stuff do what you want it to.  
“Ok, first order a business,” you flail your hand furiously “Fuck off, necklace. I got business to take care of.”  
After a little bit of flapping your arm, one of the ends of the cord droops. The whole thing is uncoiled quickly, and you use it to tie the bundle you make out of one of the shirts, pilfered from the closet. One of yours so Kankri won’t complain about you staining his nice shirts with your messy magic. In the shirt, you carefully pack the jewellery and some stray charms. The cord wraps itself around the bundle and shuts it tight. After that, all that’s left is the knife.  
Yes, the knife. The one you planned to use multiple times to show Kankri his organs. The roughly carved bit of leopard seal your little cousin-brother-whatever-the-fuck-he-is made for you. His very first project, as well. You tossed it into that disgusting canal on the night you and Kankri first kissed and dove into the muck less than four hours later, unable to leave Eridan’s hard work to gather filth in alien water.  
It has stayed with you since, and the memories around it are mostly good. Sure, there were a couple of times you almost buried it up to the hilt in Kankri’s fragile human spine, and you did have to use it a few more times in the sea and on the shore to protect yourself from a manner of threatening things…it’s a good knife, though.  
And for some reason, it’s not the only thing left in the bag.  
Bewildered, you reach down and fish out a monstrosity made of sea-silk, stitched by messy, little hands, with pebble eyes that catch the light at the most terrifying angles.   
The name roughly translates to: “Tentaboo? My gods, yer still alive?”  
Tentaboo: one of your first, and sadly, only attempts at being a good big cousin/brother. When you heard that you were gonna have a baby cousin/brother, you got excited and wanted to make something for the baby to let him know he was welcome. At the time, your favourite thing in the world was your own plush, whose name escapes you entirely. So you thought, hey, why not make Eridan something soft and silky to lavish his love on?  
Clearly, you had access to the best materials. Clearly, you made it with minimal help from your dad.  
“How the flippin’ fluke fuck didja get in here, Tentaboo?”  
Tentaboo’s shapeless body is untouched by the ravages of time, although the wear and tear of a child’s adoration are still plain to see on it. Was it a he or a she or in between? Or did it change? You can’t remember, but you do remember that the older you got, the more terrified you became of it. Your own creation. And also, the manifestation of a good portion of your childhood fears.  
That settles it. The shoebox was breached. You’ve got to shut this pocket down.  
But first, you’ve got to remember how to shut the pocket of the bubble down. Gods, you’re getting old. How could you forget something so important?  
Cursing yourself, you stand and pick the box up by a corner. Oh, yep, that’s too fucking heavy.  
Plans.  
You’ve got plans, and these are what these plans look like” firstly, you’ve gotta start putting these talismans up. If you’re going to try magic as big as scrying again, you need some wards up. Sollux, Gamzee and the dog are getting them all too. You’re not about to let your babies wander around unprotected if there are dangerous mers in the area.  
Secondly, you’ve got to get Eridan on his feet. You need his help for this. Most importantly, you need to know how he and Sollux know each other. As far as you know, Eridan has never seen a human up close that wasn’t drowned or on a fishing boat.  
Thirdly, you need to locate your father.  
You wonder if he’ll still call you his son, when you meet again. If he’ll answer your call at all. You didn’t part on the best of terms and Dualscar Ampora (Cary to his friends) never was one for ungracious final words. Had he known that last fight was going to be his last words to you for the foreseeable future, he would have likely forgotten the fight completely and clasped you to his chest and told his favourite, most embarrassing baby stories.  
Of course, there’s always the chance that he has stayed spitting mad at you for faking your death (he has to know you faked it- otherwise, why would those mers have come up to search or you?) and that his way of revenge is kidnapping Kankri, in which case it’s a fucking war.  
The dog must smell the weird magic, because she’s agitated when you reach the front room. Her fur stands on end and her teeth are bared. She hunches and growls at you for a split second, before she realises who you are, then she licks your feet abashedly.  
“Nothin’ ta worry yer furry head ‘bout. Daddy’s experimentin’ with dangerous magic, that’s it.”  
Gods, listen to you. It’s only a matter of time until the wave-y inflection on your ‘v’s and ‘w’s makes a come-back.  
Dropping the bundle on the couch, you hold Tentaboo at arm’s length and descend into the basement, to the salt-water room. Hopefully Eridan will be glad to see Tentaboo is back.   
He dozes underwater. The lining of his neck remains an inflamed purple as his tissue-paper gills work slowly in his neck. Those new legs are folded up uselessly beside him. He’s going to need to be taught how to walk, as soon as he can bear the pain of the new appendages. Better be fucking soon. As far as you know at the moment, your baby cousin/brother caused the apocalypse.  
You place Tentaboo gently in his arms “Sleep well, ya stupid, clumsy shit.”  
He does not stir.  
“My gods, stop starin’. Yer a freak a fabric an’ nature.”  
Despite your stern warnings, Tentaboo’s eyes find you through the water. You back up the stairs without breaking eye-contact. The moment its eyes are off you, you turn and bolt up the stairs and throw the door open.  
The rain has stopped.  
Dawn crept up while you lay catatonic on the couch with Kankri’s ring in your hand. Gods, Sollux, Gamzee and the others. Your people. Your whole town. You’ve got to find them.  
No sooner than you have stepped onto the front porch does the glare of headlights fill your drive. A car crunches up the gravel path, and presently, a white head pops out of the passenger window.  
“Where the fuck is my brother?”


	13. Random flashback strikes again: when Kanny met Cronus

Kankri Vantas: ask this guy out already ========>  
Sunday.  
It would have to be the traditional Catholic holy day, wouldn’t it? Well if you had set your plans in motion earlier, say a Saturday night, than you would have been stepping on the toes of the Jewish religion, and Friday was the Muslim holy day, so whichever way you turned you were disgracing somebody’s god.  
Really, the only reason it has taken you so long from the Tuesday when you informed Porrim of your growing emotions for Cronus Ampora to this Sunday, well, it’s the fault of your courage. Your courage was ramped up to do it after leaving Porrim’s room, but your intuition told you it would be better to wait for a day when there were no lessons or other glaring obligations in the way of the fiasco that was sure to follow. You were impatient at first, as if it was somehow Cronus’s fault that you were waiting to tell him how he makes you feel. Then you were scared, as if it was somehow certain that the instant you tried to make this serious, Cronus would run away from you.   
There was a real roller-coaster, building up to this day.   
But here it is.  
Sunday. The holy day.  
You’re going to ask him out. Formalise it. Hand him some form of permission to take it further. Or, if he turns out to be an alien as you suspect he is, teach him how to love. Your mind has travelled to wonderfully dirty places when not concerning itself with the impending doom.  
So, you’re being casual about it. You have asked Cronus to take a walk with you without hinting that there are any ulterior motives behind it. Kind of diabolic, now that you think of it, the way you have drawn him away from the rest of the world into this pocket of quiet and beauty in the park, and most importantly, how you have separated him from the pack. Almost predatory. Or is it not? Is your view on all of this business just skewed because you are essentially a virgin when it comes to this sort of formal, out-of-the-closet stuff?  
The good thing is that Cronus suspects nothing.  
His hands have stayed casually in his pockets, although you think they are clenched around something, the conversation flows easily. He expertly diverts the subject whenever it nears the realm of his own personal life, back to you or to something else different so skilfully, often you don’t realise it has been done until a few topics later.   
Whatever he is hiding, you won’t mention it this time. You figure that up until it poses a health risk to you or him or somebody else, it is his business alone. Only half a year ago this sentiment would have been quite different: you would have pressed Cronus with varying degrees of subtly until his secrets were spilled and your relationship was soured before it had a chance to begin. You have changed, though. Whenever he wants to tell you, if he ever does trust you enough to explain what he hides, you hope you will have the courage to accept the truth.   
The two of you are walking underneath some blossoming trees. Apple trees, you think, dropping a litter of pink petals. It’s just too perfect. Cronus’s complexion is set off by the shocking pink in his dark hair, every time a petal is caught there. Each time you face a serious internal struggle: should you tell him? Should you let him go on unaware so the effect will not be spoilt? Should you take a picture? Because you have resolved to be strong and self-controlled today, you always point it out to him.  
He looks fantastic enough on his own, in his black jeans (already a classic, to your mind) and a hoodie that both clings to him and conceals him. Cronus has proved quite adept at managing that particular quirk in his clothing. You’re sure that compared to him, you are an ugly stepsister, with your awkward, worn sweater (the only thing you could get comfortable in this morning, although you desperately wanted to dress a little better) and plain blue-denim jeans and the same mess of hair that’s been sitting on your head, barely tamed by a brush, all semester.  
Hopefully, you will not look like the ugly, squat, Lord-of-the-Rings dwarf you currently picture yourself as when Cronus looks at you.  
“How-w often do these thin’s bloom?” he asks.  
He phrases it as if he is asking about this particular park, but you suspect he’s never seen a tree in bloom before. Perhaps flowers are an entirely new concept to him.  
“Oh, well they’re supposed to bloom in the spring, these apple trees, but this park is unusual in some way that causes the trees to bloom in about mid-spring rather than early spring, so we end up with blossoms that last far later than their contemporaries in other parks and yet, through some microcosmic quirk, the environment remains in balance.”  
Cronus listens to this tirade with mild amusement, a smile touching the corner of his mouth. You have noticed that is where he tends to smile from. He is reluctant to show his teeth, although he doesn’t seem to make a conscious decision to hide them away.   
Reaching up, he dusts some petals from his hair (no, why? WHY?!) “W-we had somethin’ like this at home. Not trees, mind ya.”  
“Flowerbeds?”  
He shrugs “I’ll tell ya somethin’, this is the w-warmest damned summer I ev-ver been in. Heat’s somethin’ fierce, huh?”  
You glance up at the sky and point towards some thunderclouds, their bellies drooping over the distant skyscrapers “I expect there will be a thunderstorm tonight.”  
You’re tempted to ask if he has ever seen one of those.  
Cronus cocks an eyebrow “Damn. The school’s grounded, right?”  
“All buildings are grounded.”  
His mouth quirks in irritation “I mean, I w-won’t get shocked if I touch some outlets or metal stuff durin’ the storm?”  
You have to wonder where on earth he lived to consider that a reasonable risk in a thunderstorm “Cronus, the likelihood of your being shocked in a storm are next to none, unless you’re standing underneath a tree.”  
He flinches and casts a suspicious look at the trees on either side. You bite down on a giggle.  
“You sure?”  
“I promise.”  
“Alright, I’ll stay inside tonight. No trees for me.”  
Up ahead, a bridge appears on the path. This is a stream separate from the canal where you first kissed Cronus, and this one is clean enough to support fish and algae. The two of you stop at the crest of the bridge to watch the little fish dart among the swaying algae, and a comfortable silence fills the space between you.  
Well, comfortable for Cronus.  
“Cronus?”  
Oh God, he has no idea of what’s about to happen “Yeah?”  
How the hell do you phrase this? How are you supposed to ask this?  
What is even…  
Ok.  
You’re just going to stop thinking and let whatever comes out of your mouth come out and hope it’s good.  
“Do you want to go out sometime?”  
Oh really. Really?  
An advanced vocabulary in English and a voracious appetite for reading at your disposal, and that’s really the most inventive thing to come out of your mouth?  
And Cronus is smiling. Shyly, happily, whatever.  
But it’s not a pained smile. It’s not an embarrassed smile.  
He’s just smiling.  
“Depends on w-what ya mean. Are ya asking me out?”  
“Yes.”  
He glances down at the water, his face flushing a delicate red. You can’t bear the agony of embarrassment anymore and stare at the opposite bank of the stream, counting the daisies that dot the grass.  
“Ok.”  
Thank God he’s the one to lean in for the kiss, because you can’t move an inch.


	14. Hello again, my old friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relationships are complicated and painful and we should all live like hermits.

Your name is Karkat Vantas and this is not how you pictured your brother’s husband.  
Jesus, he is hot.  
Like, not cute. Not attractive. Full-on, steaming, blindingly, blazingly hot. So hot, it’s like looking at the sun with the naked eye. Jumping Jesus, how, Kankri?  
How did Kankri…how?  
Just, how?   
Kankri is an idiot. A bonafide moron with too many strong opinions and an inability to keep them to himself. He may be doing alright in the looks department, but…but this guy is miles out of his league. Light-years out of his league. Cronus’s league is observed in an entirely different physical plane.   
Wow.  
Just wow.  
This guy has been married into your family for almost three years, and you’ve been missing the chance to look at THIS level of WOW every time your father has decided that no, he’s still outraged and disgusted by his son’s refusal to sexually conform?   
You’re mad now, because your brother married a hot man and didn’t think to tell you just how outrageously hot his husband was, like you weren’t going to appreciate him or something.  
But also because your brother is missing.  
You’re not surprised. You’re not upset either. You’re not sure what you feel at the moment.  
Your father heard that Kankri wasn’t in the house, wasn’t on the beach, wasn’t really anywhere, and he didn’t strike Cronus like you were afraid he was. He didn’t say anything for a full minute and just stared.  
At his son-in-law, for the first time ever.  
Then he opened the car door and offered Cronus the passenger seat, saying “I take it Graa’ant Makara is still the boss in this town?”  
That’s how you came to be bouncing around in the tight space in the backseat left by the suitcases, which haven’t been touched, with the springs jabbing at you through the thin glove of the upholstery at every bump. If anger were a fuel, you could power the first passenger flight to Mars into warp-speed. If anger could be condensed into a super-power, you would be like Magneto- the greatest friend and worst enemy of mutants everywhere. If anger were a rash, your skin would be curdled and leprous.  
You just…  
YOU’RE REALLY ANGRY RIGHT NOW AND YOU DON’T FUCKING KNOW IF YOU CAN FUCKING PROCESS ALL THIS ANGER WITHOUT SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF YOUR TINY LUNGS AND SCARING THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THE POOR, UNSUSPECTING DRIVER AND CAUSING A CRASH THAT WILL CRUMPLE THE CAR ROOF IN ON YOUR HEAD LIKE A TIN CAN CRUSHED UNDER-FOOT.  
Deep breaths, Karkat.  
A long time ago, you decided you were never going to come back to this town.  
Nor to its people, or, from another perspective, the kind and cruel bastards that had been your best friends, your idols, your enemies, given you your first broken bones and kisses and taught you what it was liked to be really, really dear to somebody, and to be able to reciprocate that kind of affection.  
Nope.  
Never fucking coming back. You’re like that one blond guy Charles Heston played in the original ‘Planet of the Apes’. You may be surrounded by the social equivalent of intelligent monkeys, who in turn think of you as some kind of sub-person, pet-type thing with no concept of society or culture, who are so busy patting themselves on the sack they don’t notice that you do have feelings, thanks very much, but you chose to devour them for sustenance because it’s safer than feeling them, thanks very much and….where were you going with this?  
Oh yeah. So, you may be far away from home and immersed in people for whom you have no love, and whom you would rather see cooked and eaten by cannibals than talk to, but you don’t want to go back. There’s really just no way to go back, is there?  
Is there?  
You hope to Allah and his counterparts that there is not.  
You want out of this car.  
You almost don’t care about finding Kankri. To you, what seems more important at the moment is to find a nice, snug concrete bunker where you can get acquainted with the ways of hermitage and the fun kinds of games you can play by yourself for dangerously extended periods of time, such as the favourite, ‘hey what’s that terrifying shadowy figure in the corner of my eye?’. Alternatively, you’ll just dig the hole for the bunker by yourself, and leap into the hole before they can pour the concrete and pat some dirt over yourself. Anything.  
Everything. Whatever it takes not to have to hear the name Makara again.  
Your father and Cronus are talking.  
They speak like relatives gathered at the death-bed of a cousin that is dying of an extremely dramatic injury- perhaps sustained in a sky-diving accident, or when attempting to make love to a shark under the misguided impression that it was an ample, grey-fleshed maiden skinny-dipping at dusk. Kind of bewildered and giddy, like they don’t quite believe this is happening. To them, of all people.  
Your eyes are closed so you don’t have to see the drive into town. Still, you know every bump, every pothole and every landmark. Signposts bent in high-velocity winds and gnarled trees with the scraggly canopy that only grows on the coast and that one random abandoned house with its walls corroded by the salty rains that fall into its open interior and you can feel every single one of them burning into your sides as you pass, surprised and offended to have you back.  
What are you doing back here, Karkat?  
Didn’t you forget about us, Karkat?  
We assumed you had better things to do than write to us, Karkat.  
Better people to talk to than us, Karkat.  
What were you doing, Karkat, in that big city so far away from home?  
If you left us in the first place, why did you come back at all, Karkat?  
You bury your face in your knees and block out the world.  
Or try to, at least, but the world seeps back in at the corners and before you know it your eyes are wet as you think of him.  
Gamzee is an adult now, practically. That’s assuming that he has yet to die of an overdose of anti-depressants or something similar.  
No, no you would know, if he were dead. You would feel it.  
You can always feel Gamzee scrabbling at the back of your head. Demanding that you remember him and how much you loved him and how much you loved him back. Asking why, why the holy, sizzling, steaming fuck, did you cut him off when all he did was scare you a little bit?  
Oh God. Allah. Whoever.  
You can’t listen to yourself think anymore.  
So you listen to Cronus and your father.  
“…drove all this way in that kind of weather. A world-wide event, right?”  
“Yeah. I don’t know what I was thinking. I mean, beyond getting here, I don’t know what I was thinking.”  
“They still talk about you here.”  
“I’m sure you know all about me, then.”  
“Well I know-w you were a good man when you were here.”  
“What do they say about why I left? That I was a murderer or something? I’m sure Mother Quinn and Father John would have loved to support that image.”  
“They just say you got out the only way you knew how.”  
“Who is this ‘they’ that’s so well-informed?”  
“Graa’ant Makara. W-who else? Him and Lee Zahhak-”  
“Oh Jesus, Lee is really still here? Lee and all the rest of them?”  
“The whole gang.”  
That goddamned name.  
Not Makara. The one after that.  
Zahhak.  
Holy fuck. Equius is an adult too.  
So is Sollux. So are Nepeta and Aradia.  
Time truly is a cruel bitch of a mistress. Master, actually, since Time’s always shown as an old, emaciated version of white-old-man-God. Time is a fucking bitch. Time marches on whether or not you give you say-so, and he doesn’t care who he crushes or what crumbles in his wake. Time only has to beckon and you fall on your knees, like ‘just a little more’ and he’s all ‘oh but other people need my services’.  
He’s a whore without any kind of loyalty and you hate his rotten guts.  
What are they going to look like?  
Maybe you won’t have to see, if you just curl up into a hedgehog-like ball of rage and agony and hibernate for the summer underneath the passenger seat. You don’t want to see. They’re frozen in your mind as their younger selves. Gap-toothed, apple-cheeked, plump with baby-fat and perfect. You don’t want to see the disillusioned assholes they have grown up to be.  
And you can’t let them see the disillusioned asshole you have grown up to be.  
Fuck this, you’re hiding.  
You’re sure that you’re hiding until the car stops and your eyes fly open and you see your town for the first time. And that familiar, massive man heading to the car and not noticing that Lezlee Vantas and his son are with Cronus because he’s just so fucking glad that Cronus is ok.  
Graa’ant Makara catches him by the shoulders. They just look at each other for a moment.  
“Kankri?” he asks.  
Cronus’s eyebrows knit together and he doesn’t say a word. Graa’ant sends a sort of hateful, pleading glance up at the clear skies.  
“I can’t find him.”  
“Ya mean ya didn’t see him die?”  
“No, he’s…he’s not dead, I think. I just can’t find him.”  
Graa’ant’s shoulders slump “Well, shit, son, why didn’t y’all say that? I can work with that! We just found the Miller’s boy hidin’ under the goddamned docks! We’ll find him.”  
There’s a small crowd in the street, all bunched together to avoid the puddles.  
Scanning the crowd, you see plenty of familiar faces. Your childhood dentist and doctors and teachers and neighbours and shopkeepers and parents of kids that you knew in school- there! There’s Hana Megido!  
And beside her, it’s Psiimon Captor. Lee Zahhak has his uniform on, because he’s either in his scrubs for the office or his overalls for the garage. Meulin Leijon is with him, because the two of them are inexplicably always together, just like their fucking kids.  
And oh fuck, there they are.  
They’re just there.  
You think you at least deserve a big reveal, a dramatic flair to the reunion. A fucking fanfare of trumpets to signify the approach of this glorious, long-dreaded and long-awaited moment.  
But it comes faster than you’re prepared for, when some asshole says “Oh my God, it’s Lezlee!” and everyone starts talking at once and your father goes to them and before you know it you’re moving too and oh fuck oh fuck Gamzee sees you.  
Gamzee disentangles himself from Aradia’s arm and walks towards you. You walk towards him without really being aware of your legs moving.  
He’s so tall. He’s so wiry and slim. Has he brushed those curls once since you left?  
Once you’re within arms’ reach, you mean to hug him. But he sort of just falls to his knees and throws his arms around your waist and buries his face in your stomach. You fold over him, cradling him, not caring how many people stare.  
“I’m so glad you’re alive.” you rasp.  
And you’re not talking about the rain.  
Gamzee doesn’t say anything. He just holds you tightly and squeezes the life out of you.

Karkat Vantas: be Sollux Captor =======>  
Sollux Captor: stare like a moron =======>

 

“Holy shit,” says Aradia “He’s like the devil. He has to be. We invoked his name too many times last night and now he’s here.”  
Nepeta gapes. You gape.   
Equius laughs “Sounds about accurate to me.”  
“Jesus shit.” manages Nepeta “God almighty. Christ on a pogo-stick. Holy Spirit in a Burger King.” she rambles on like this for a time until she seizes Equius’s hand and places it over her mouth, silencing herself.  
“I suppose we can expect an influx of our friends and family at this point. I mean, I assumed that Rus and the others would be showing up, not Karkat. I thought he was dead.” says Equius, checking his phone with his free hand.  
The service is still down. Equius’s father suggested that was because the government was attempting to keep populations isolated from each other, from the outside world, so people were less likely to try to get to their friends and family. There are not many who would try, he says, to cross the country into an uncertain chaos when they had their own homes right in front of them. It is probably for the better, he says, that no one moves for the moment. Not until the government can figure out what is going on and then dispatch the appropriate aid supplies.  
Graa’ant Makara then suggested that Lee should marry the fucking government, if he loved it so much, and asked him if he intended to stick around past night-fall when his older son’s fate was unknown? Tension, sexual and otherwise, crackled in the air and Gamzee and Equius looked at each other with a resigned sort of exasperation, knowing it was only a matter of time until they were step-brothers. You ship it, shamelessly.  
It took an hour after the rain stopped for the streets to start filling up again. Of course, Graa’ant Makara was one of the first out. His felt it his solemn duty to be one of the first to risk his ass, as the police commissioner. You and the others just so happened to be coming outside at the same time so it was an ideal moment for the two Makaras to spy each other. It would have been a more dramatic reunion in a movie, you guess, with slow-motion running and all that, but because they are Makaras they just waved to each other.  
Gamzee sure is making up for the missed opportunity with Karkat. By now, the two of them are on their feet again, but they haven’t let go of each other. Karkat has come to his senses somewhat and steered Gamzee to the curb, where they now stand, exchanging whispers and staring at each other like a military couple reuniting for the first time.  
Reading your mind, Aradia leans over to you and whispers “Do you think they’re in love?”  
Your skin prickles at the mention of the L-word.   
Eridan. You’ve got to see Eridan.  
“No. They’re just glad to see each other again.”  
Aradia loops her arm through yours, putting her head on your shoulder “So Gamzee has his best friend back, good for him. Of course, I’m unbelievably mad at Karkat for not writing or talking or you know, just dropping us a line to let us know he’s not fucking dead, but hey…Gamzee’s satisfied.”  
Nepeta removes Equius’s hand from her mouth to seethe “I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to talk to him. Equius, let’s go find something productive to do.”  
She marches off towards Hana Megido with Equius in tow, who has taken over giving orders for the moment while Graa’ant, Cronus and Lezlee get their stories straight.  
“We should go too,” urges Aradia “I’ll need something to distract myself with until Damara calls. I’m actually worried about her. Isn’t that crazy? I miss her. I’m scared for her and everything.”  
You shake your head. You’re about to agree, to tell her you’re worried for Mituna, before you catch yourself with a reality check. Even after all these years, you still forget.  
“I’ve gotta go.” you say suddenly “I…I left something at Kankri and Cronus’s house.”  
“I’ll come with you.” she volunteers.  
“No! Uh, no, you just stay here. It’s…you just stay with Eq and Peta and the others. Help them out. Help your mom out.”  
She frowns, but she does not push the issue.  
“Be careful. And for fuck’s sake, tell your dad you’re leaving, even if he won’t notice. Just make sure somebody knows you haven’t melted and drained into the sewers.”  
And she’s off. She catches up to the other two and tucks herself under Equius’s free arm, beaming at them both. You watch them go, wanting so badly to run to them too. But you can’t. Eridan.  
Finding your father is not so hard. He took one of the most difficult and involved jobs, of course, the head-count. By now he has finished toting up the towns people that have made it to the square. He’s making a chart of the dead on a corkboard by the little theatre that the community announcements are normally posted to.  
He hears you coming, but he does not look at you. You only caught a glimpse of him earlier in the crowd after leaving the house, but made no attempt to catch up to him.  
“I’m going now.” you say shortly “I’ll be gone for a little while. Don’t try to find me.”  
Your father scratches off two more names in red pen “Alright.”  
“By the way, I saw Mr Chaney die.”  
He points with the tip of the pen to show you the name is already scratched off.  
“And Ms Kaur.”  
Again, he points to the crossed-off name.  
“And her kid. Suky.”  
He picks up the red pen and scratches the name off.  
Your eyes swimming, you move forward and put your arms around him for just a second, hugging him from behind. He tenses up, like he always does when you come close. Or when you’re nearby. Or just whenever he sees you.  
“Bye, Dad. I’ll be back before it gets dark.”  
He lets you go without saying a word.


	15. A brief respite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, it is tough to get my school-work done and consistently update this fic along with the other two I'm currently writing, and to keep adding to the other works I'm storing up for later dates. It's also what keeps me sane, this writing. It's rewarding as hell to watch the view counter climbing. Makes it all worthwhile, knowing that there are people who actually want to sit through my loquacious and confusing style.  
> Thanks, people. Now I'm going to write three essays on the Spanish civil war (spoilers: fascism sucks)

Eridan Ampora: what happened to you? ==========>

 

Your name is Eridan Ampora and the world is on fire.  
Human sciences- the quaintest thing in the world, in your humble, with their inflexible laws and theorems- dictate that nothing can burn underwater. Burn like, fire burn. Nothing underwater will catch on fire, right?  
Wrong. Humans are dumb. Humans believe in gravity.  
Your home is on fire right now. Not a small or benign fire either, from cooking or a blow-out in one of the lava vents that serve as heat and fuel in your home. A massive, sprawling fire that drips and creeps like ink does. It fell from the sky about ten minutes ago. Like what the humans call ‘marine snow’, when the corpse of one of the animals that live closer to the surface falls and pings off the Bubbles that shield the city. Except this didn’t slop off the side of the domed shields. This burned right through and before you knew it, all of the Bubbles were crisping and flaking off. The entire system, falling to pieces like pages being burnt.  
The fire poured in. It’s green. Some kind of old, evil magic that was banned for a good reason. You think the old civilization must have used it, back when Atlantis was mainly comprised of spirits who had grown sick of Greece and the surrounding areas and retired to found city beneath the waves. That old. Impossibly old.  
Old as the Witch, probably.  
And more importantly, destroying your fucking city.  
You noticed the glow of the fire a few seconds before it had begun to eat through the Bubbles and pointed it out to Feferi, who was curious to see if it was some kind of bioluminescent animal she had not yet had the pleasure of capturing and culling. You were disgusted, of course. In the back of your pan, you wondered if it was some kind of tendril-beast migration and worried about being on the outside, of being caught in the epidemic of stings and poisonings that inevitably follows a visit from a swarm of the beasts.  
But then you realised that the glow as not the gentle, pulsing glow of tendril-beasts.  
“Fef,” you chirped, hoarse “That’s fire, ain’t it?”  
She closed her hand around yours in a shocked silence.  
This is where you are, now.  
Hovering on the ledge of black rock, covered in a swaying dark seaweed that is ideal for hunting the shellfish that Feferi came out to hunt. You only left the city today because there had been reports of some strange, tooth-beast mounted mers going by on the outskirts of the Bubbles and if she was going to experience an attempted kidnapping, you might as well be there to help her spear and shoot her attackers. It’s a courtesy as a friend. A sort of duty as her future mate, but whatever.  
“Oh my Gog,” she breathes “Dave. He still thinks we’re in there. He doesn’t know we’re out here.”  
Dave is the captain of the team of guards that watches after what he fondly refers to as ‘the Royal Boils’, a reference to the amount of pain you cause him. He is almost exactly the same age as you- your wriggling days are within ten cycles of each other, but he is still the captain of the guards.  
Right now, he will be charging through the burning wreck of the city, looking for you.  
You and Fef sneak out all the time. How the fuck were you gonna know today would be different? It’s just a game! Dodging around Dave, trying to make his job as difficult as you can- it’s not malicious, it’s just that neither of you have as much freedom as you want and Dave’s in charge of making sure that you’re not hurt because you’re helping yourself to that freedom and…and how were you supposed to know?  
The city is melting, essentially. The rock and coral the buildings spring from or are carved into simply washes away wherever the fire touches it. The city was built on either side of a trench that leads straight to the heart of the earth, with dozens of tube-like passageways strung between the halves to connect them. Much of the buildings have already fallen into the deep black stretched beneath the halves, sucking down countless mers as they fall. From this distance, you’re not too sure of what you’re seeing. The glare of the fire has already engulfed most of the city in just a few minutes. But every now and then you see a handful of shadows flicker among the sheets of flame, darting among the passage-ways across the gorge, but trapped by the falling fragments of the Bubble…  
“We have to go back.” you manage.  
Fef’s hand immediately tightens on yours “No. Whoever is surviving this is getting out of the fire right now. They don’t need our help.” She turns on you, her eyes wild “What are you carrying right now?”  
When you don’t move to answer her, she fumbles at your tool-belt and snaps it off, rifling through the pouches of medicine and food and a few miscellaneous weapons Dave has warned you against ever leaving your quarters without. You are mesmerised by the fire. The ledge is so far out of the way that it is unlikely any of the survivors (please, let it be Dave and John and Vriska and Kanaya and the others, please, don’t let them be hurt or dead) will come here. More than likely they are already on their way to one of the designated meeting-points that are arranged for instances such as these.  
Well, more like volcanic eruption.  
Not fire that seems to come from the sky.  
In a flash, you feel you understand it all. Feferi is easing Ahab’s Crosshairs off your shoulder to test the weight, apparently planning to use it herself if you are determined to stay catatonic with shock. It’s her own weapon that sets you off. The trident, the gold trident, scuffed from use in hunting and the occasional battle Dave couldn’t handle on his own, it’s the same as her mother’s.  
The Witch, right?  
It’s the Witch. Fire as old as the Witch, who ruled the lands until shortly after Fef was born. Three days after Fef was born to her by some anonymous mate, whom she had undoubtedly consumed once she was sure his seed would stick, your father finally did what the whole of the population of the city was hoping he would do, no, the whole sea, and challenged her for the throne. Through a series of dirty tricks he has yet to reveal to you, he won.  
Dualscar Ampora became the new king. The Witch’s daughters were deemed innocent. Meenah, the older, was promised to Dualscar’s own son (your brother) to keep her from complaining. When you were born two years later (the rumour being, again, that your father ate his mate as soon as he was sure he was going to stay with wriggler) and when Feferi met you, she was told the writhing ball of angry blubber was going to be her mate when you were old enough.  
The Witch is back, you’re sure.  
Who else would use that fire?  
No one else would use that fire. No one else would know it. You always knew she didn’t just disappear. You never saw the woman once outside of likenesses of her- of portraits and drawings- but you know this has Witch written all over it.  
The city is completely engulfed by now.  
Fef takes you by the shoulders and says slowly, so you can understand “We have to move, Eri. We gotta get to one of the meeting points and find Dave and the others.”  
“Call off the ritual too. W-what’s the word, w-weddin’? I think yer mother’s tellin’ ya she don’t think much ‘a yer future ‘husband’.”

 

Surprisingly, when you open your eyes, it is not to fire.  
Sol.  
Where the fuck did he come from?  
“W-where the fuck didja come from?” you croak.  
Sol sits at the edge of the pool, both leaning towards you and drawing back from the water, as if afraid to touch it.  
“What did you do, Eridan?”  
You blink. You’ve got no idea what he is talking about and absolutely every bit of your body below the waist is still in screaming, stinging pain. Wait a minute, how did he get in here? The last thing you remember is passing out after you drank that fucking potion-thingie-whatever on the beach.  
Where even are you right now?  
Disorientated, you shield your eyes against the harsh lights overhead and submerge, trying to clear your head with a few deep breathes. The water tastes good. Sharp, though. Of magic. Specifically, of a giant dump of magic in a dose so huge it can be nothing but the trace of a world-wide catastrophe running through your lungs.  
Oh, Gog. Why did this have to happen?  
You want to stay underwater forever, but you also want to see Sol’s face. Badly. You haven’t seen him in years and years and years and Gog, he has grown up nerdier and cuter than you could have ever hoped for. Resurfacing, you glide to the edge of the pool. Wow, that feels different. Should you be shy about your current lack of covering? And what the fuck is that thing between your legs?  
Wow, you cannot deal with this kind of stress right now. Nope, no way, you’re just going to ignore that weird, shell-beast like, sea cucumber thing. It’s got to be some kind of replacement for your bulge.  
It’s the grossest thing you have ever seen.  
“Sol, are ya cryin’?”  
Sol wipes his eyes on his sleeve “Lots of people died today and I need to know why. Just…just tell me what you did.”  
Does he really think you’re so powerful that you caused all this? That’s kind of offensive. Wow, that’s actually really fucking rude.  
You’re trying to get mad at him, but you can’t. Not when his face is streaked with tears “You think I did this?” you say softly, reaching for his hand.  
He entwines his fingers through yours and lowers himself to his stomach “I don’t know what to think right now. Tell me what I should think, Eridan. There was a rain that melted people and Cronus told me his colleague got her leg melted and…I saw people turn to slurry and go down drains. How do I…how do I even process that?”  
You don’t know what to tell him. There’s nothing you can say to make it better. The carnage he must have seen…nothing. You know. The sight of the burning city is still seared into your mind, even a week later. You’ll be seeing the towers collapsing into the deep for a while, every time you close your eyes.  
“I saw my home burnin’ a w-week ago if that makes ya feel better.”  
A short, harsh laugh escapes him “No! It doesn’t, you dumbass!”  
But he’s smiling.  
“I missed you so much,” he brings the back of your hand to his flushed, warm face and sniffs “I never thought I was gonna see you again. I thought you were a dream.”  
“I’m so sorry I didn’t come back. I w-wanted to. I really w-wanted to…but I didn’t, did I?”  
You wonder if Sol has missed you as much as you have missed him, or if the affections are just resurfacing because you have too.  
Affections. What a quaint word. Quaint, and it doesn’t come close to touching how you feel. Not at all. As embarrassing as it is to admit, you, Eridan Ampora, the heir to the throne of the submerged kingdoms, have been completely in love with a human since you were about nine years old. Maybe you’ll tell him later. Getting rejected because of being too clingy- that would destroy you.  
Him, too, you bet.  
Gog, you are so tired.  
“W-will you be here tomorrow-w?”  
Sol hesitates for a second, then “I’ll stay right here all night.”  
“I need ta learn ta walk tomorrow-w. I can’t stay useless for long.”  
He nods “If you’re sure.”  
“I am.”  
“Then I’ll help you as much as I can.”  
He leans forward, possibly to kiss you, but there is a sharp squeal of protest from underneath him. Sol jumps and fishes a stuffed abomination out from underneath him you were afraid that, like his creator, you would never see again.  
“Tentaboo!” you shriek.  
Sol’s lip curls “What the heck is that?”  
“Cronus made it for me w-when I w-was just a new wriggler! Aw-w, he musta dug it outta his stuff fer me! I remember, w-when he w-went on his mission I sent Tentaboo in his bubble to keep him company!”  
Sol blinks “I didn’t understand a word of that, but ok.”  
You settle on the edge of the pool with the plush under your chin “Sol, are ya really gonna stay the w-whole night?”  
“On my stomach and everything. I promise.”  
“Ok.”  
Exhaustion overwhelms you and our eyes drift shut before you can even think about a goodnight kiss.

 

Cronus Vantas: out yourself ==============>

They have always told stories about your absentee father-in-law, around here.  
The stories they told painted him as the kind of last rat off a sinking ship before the whole thing plunged into the ocean. His friends remembered him fondly, though sadly, at the way he had to peel out of the town and out of everyone’s lives. Such good sons, they would say, and how good it was to have Kankri back home with the beginnings of a new family. Sometimes you thought Lezlee Vantas’s friends didn’t even notice that his elder son had brought home a shiny new groom, rather than a blushing bride. From what you know of human prejudices, especially the kinds of beliefs that Lezlee himself held during Kankri’s childhood, they should probably be a lot less ready to accept you and him.  
Eh, whatever. You have yet to be refused surface or abused, so even if they’re all whispering behind your back and about sinfulness and godlessness, you’ll take it.  
After spending the better part of the day with Lezlee in Hana Megido’s Jeep, searching the dunes fruitlessly, you have kind of gotten to like him. Far better than you ever thought you would in the last five years. How could you prepare yourself to appreciate a man that apparently cut your husband from his life because of the gender of his spouse? In the last five years, not once have you thought there might be an occasion where you find yourself genuinely liking Lezlee Vantas. Not even as the plans for their visit were finally laid, and Kankri grew almost too nervous to sleep and even the dog picked up on the anxiety filling up the house and wouldn’t stop howling through the night at the ocean, for mysterious reasons. Actually, now that you think about the way this guy affects Kankri, it’s no surprise you didn’t like him very much up to this point.  
The stories never helped, either.  
His church was into some bad stuff. Some extremely illegal, amoral, evil stuff in the name of (white Christian) God, and it really just gets right into your gills whenever someone claims to be perpetuating any kind of evil in any God’s name. Like, no, shut up, that’s a lazy excuse. The first time you were told was about three months after you had moved into the town, when you were getting to know and adjust to the place and when Kankri was fending off all the well-wishers and old family friends trying to smother him with love. It was Hana Medigo that told you.  
She serves as the town’s gossip as well as the favourite school-teacher of most of the small school. The first time you saw her, you thought she was some kind of assassin. Not because she was Asian (at that point, three years into your excursion, you had seen most every race and combination of race and were no longer excited or surprised to see how many shapes and forms humans could come in), but because she had that look about her. The eyes of a hunter. The reflexes of a predator. Someone you could identify with.  
You’ve made a point of trying to stay away from Hana Megido.  
You’re gathering your courage, now, to ask. There are several things you will have to discuss with Lezlee when you reach the house, and you’re afraid he will become either so afraid of you or disgusted by you that he will refuse to open up.  
But spending the day with him and others searching the dunes for Kankri (and thinking all the while what a huge waste of time this is) has formed some kind of bond you can’t quite describe. Perhaps you’ve proved it to him, that you really do love his son? Out with him all day, searching, at the back of your pan, marvelling at that slim, stubborn hope that you held onto that he would be just around the corner each time you turned a new one, even though you know he has been taken out of your reach.  
Lezlee isn’t talking that much. He’s just letting you drive.  
So you take the opportunity.  
“When we were datin’, Kan used to talk about this place a lot. How much he missed the people here an’ such. He talked about movin’ outta here fast, away from some friends in the summer before university or the last year of high-school. I’m not sure which one.”  
Lezlee stares listlessly out the window. He hasn’t been in a good mood since arriving here, for obvious reasons, but Karkat worsened his mood by refusing to leave Gamzee Makara when he was told they were leaving. Karkat will be spending the night under Gamzee’s roof. You’re not sure how Gamzee is going to deal with this change. God knows his mental state is anything but stable. On the other hand, Karkat was his best friend. Alone time might be just what they need, after such a long separation.  
You know that’s all you’re going to want when you get Kankri back. The last twenty-four hours have almost destroyed you.  
“Cronus?”  
You jump a little “Yeah?”  
“How old was Kankri when he met you?”  
“He was about ta turn nineteen.”  
“Hmm. So you’ve been together for five years?”  
“Almost six, now.”  
“Little quick to get married, weren’t you?”  
You bristle a little at this. Can’t the stupid man just answer a question? He’s not the only one unhappy with this arrangement.  
“I don’t think so,” you say through gritted teeth “Three years is a long time ta get ta know-w someone.”  
Fucking stutter. He’s making you so goddamned nervous and God, Gog, you do not want to stutter in front of this man.  
“Kankri told me Kurloz Makara was his roommate.”  
“Well, he ain’t lyin’. We were next door ta each other though.”  
Lezlee rubs his eyes and supresses a yawn “Cute.”  
Cute?  
What the fuck does that mean? Is this man sassing you? Does this man actually have the fucking gall to sass you in your own fucking car on the way to your own fucking house about the way you met YOUR HUSBAND, HIS SON, who happens to be MISSING during an APOCALYPTIC SCENARIO which strongly suggests that a certain NAUTICAL TYRANT IS ON HER WAY TO DESTORY EVERYTHING YOU HOLD DEAR?  
IS THAT WHAT LEZLEE VANTAS JUST FUCKING DID?  
You’re not sure you want to share a surname with him anymore. You still kinda like him, though.  
“It wasn’t cute, actually. I was just comin’ in from a different kinda world, almost, and I was scared and lonely as hell and he just sorta took me through all ‘a that. Less of a cute thing, more of a supportive relationship I really, really needed.”  
It’s a good thing you were trained by your own father to keep the smug grins to a minimum around people older than you, otherwise there would be a massive, smug-as-hell grin unfurling on your mouth right now.  
Lezlee takes a moment to recover from that. When he does, he’s a little meeker “May I ask what your home life is like?”  
“With Kankri?”  
“Before Kankri.”  
“Ah.”  
Well, your father was the ruler of all the seas and had to beg, borrow and steal every second of time he got to spend on you and your little cousin-brother. Bless his shallow pusher, your father did try his hardest to actually raise his spawn and let Eridan think that he was the fruit of Dualscar’s own seed, rather than a distant sibling who dumped the kid like a hand-me-down in favour of a free life a as a freelance hunter.  
You had a big, complex lie way back in college.  
Something about extended family in Ireland and dozens of cousins and three sisters, down to the pictures on your walls. Kankri and the others have since replaced the pictures of those fakes in your wallet, so….  
Shit.  
Shit.  
FUCK.  
YOU NEED TO CALL PORRIM AND DAMARA AND EVERYONE OH GOD HOW DID YOU FORGET ABOUT THEM?  
NO, WAIT, STAY CALM.  
You have to stay calm.  
Their siblings are all in this town, as are their parents. That means they are all probably in route to your town, right? So you can relax for now and deal with the problem in front of you, since you’re going to be seeing them all in a minute.  
Right?  
No, fuck that. You’re spamming every single one of them when you get home. The phones are probably still down, but it’s not going to fucking stop you.  
“Cronus?”  
You blink and realise you are about to veer off the road. Correcting the car with a slight screech of the tyres, you grip the steering wheels with white knuckles and consider your options.  
“I can tell ya two stories.”  
Lezlee gives you an odd look “What does that mean?”  
You glance at him nervously out of the corner of your eyes, then stiffen like a statue in the driver’s seat and keep your eyes on the road “One of ‘em is totally plausible an’ kinda sad ‘cos it involves losing touch with family, an’ the other one is sad too because I had ta completely emancipate myself from the family, but it involves the things you’d call mermaids.”  
A silence stretches between you. Lezlee’s brown skin turns to the colour of flour.  
He’s thinking he got in the car with a crazy man. He’s thinking he’ll find Kankri’s body stuffed and arranged in a sexual position in the attic. He’s thinking Karkat will be the only survivor with the Vantas name and will spend the rest of his life on the run from you, an insanely determined and dogged killer.  
You should have fed him that bullshit about the massive Irish clan.  
Finally, he speaks, and surprisingly it is not to scream for help “What is your surname?”  
“Vantas.” you say out of habit, then wince “I mean, it is now-w. I took Kanny’s surname ‘cos I didn’t really want mine no more.”  
“What was it?” he presses, his eyes sort of wild.  
It takes you a moment to remember the approximate English translation “Ampora. My name’s Tritonicus Ampora. Cronus is kinda a nickname.”  
No one ever called you Tritonicus but your old body-guard. His name was just as stupid. Dietrich Strider. What kind of a name is Strider for a creature with no legs?  
Lezlee chews on this bit of information with an unreadable expression that makes you super uncomfortable.  
“Tell me the mermaid story.” he says.  
So you tell him the mermaid story.

Lezlee wants to see proof. And while you can’t blame him, you’re not about to show him your gills. Over the five or so years you have been pounding the dirt, your gills have become akin to a kind of private area on your neck. Something you’d never let anyone but Kankri see, kinda like your dick, but the connotations aren’t the same. It’s not sexy. It’s more like a scar that came from a traumatic experience, and the same can be said for the seams on the insides of your legs where your tail split.  
Long story short, Lezlee Vantas ain’t getting a look at your gills. Those stay sealed shut firmly the entire time.  
Because you’re a terrible brother and person in general, you have no problem with showing him Eridan’s. At least you have the decency to make him wait at the top of the stairs (the dog lolling at his feet with the joy of having a human home again) while you go down with a shirt and jeans to wrestle him into them. The clothes date back to your college days. Purple skinny jeans and a black shirt with a ridiculous collar. If Eridan has any sense at all, he will hate you for putting him in these when he wakes up.  
To your surprise, when you get down there you see that Sollux is asleep by the side of the pool. Eridan’s head rests on his arms on the rim of the pool, with his head cushioned by Tentaboo’s plush body. He and Sollux are kissing-distance apart.  
Well then.  
It doesn’t help that Eridan’s still naked as the day he popped out, does it?  
Well, well, well then.  
You kind of want to kick Sollux across the room, but as you have no proof that he has touched your baby brother’s honour, you are very careful when taking Eridan out of the pool and drying him off not to jostle Sollux. Sleeping on the floor is hard. Especially flat on the stomach. This kid sure is determined to be close to your brother.  
Eridan stirs when you dress him. He does not wake up, however.  
You kinda wish he would.  
Someone should wake up and talk some sense into you. Revealing mers to a man you met today and who avoided you for five, nearly six years on the basis of your gender.  
Not smart, right? Not smart at all. Your father is cracking his head on a pillar in the palace right now and he doesn’t know why.  
You decide to carry Eridan upstairs, if only to spare Lezlee the scandal of having yet another gay couple under this roof.  
Stretching Eridan out on the couch, you scrape his hair back from his neck and beckon to Lezlee. The dog comes over and licks at Eridan’s legs, but you gather to your chest and hold her back.  
“See those purple slits in his neck? Those’re his gills.”  
Fascinated, Lezlee leans over Eridan and inspects the gills. He has the sense not to touch them, which is good. Touching Eridan’s gills would be like reaching into the ribcage to flick the lungs. You’d have to be one messed up, insensitive motherfucker to do it.  
“Who is this?”  
“My brother.”  
Lezlee draws back and drops into a chair, looking drained “Your brother. His name would happen to be Eridan, would it?”  
You blink “Kankri told you?”  
He shakes his head “I…I had a hunch. An old friend of mine loved those names. Eridan and Tritonicus, with the nickname Cronus. You see, Cronus, I believe I used to know your father.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love the fact that the comments are all screaming about the possibility of Dualsign, and everyone completely missed the fact that Eridan and Feferi are fiancées  
> The Dualsign is strong, in this one


	16. A briefer moment of recovery

College!Kankri: be sexually frustrated ============> Your name is Kankri Vantas and you are not sure where the last four months have gone.  
They kind of slipped through your fingers while you were not looking, distracted by the unexpected bliss you have found yourself in. Ok, so Cronus is still shy as hell. He’s very tentative about putting his hands on you and even when he relents and touches you and draws back about three seconds. Something ventured, little gained. What’s more, he won’t let you see him under-dressed. Anything less than a tank-top is a no-no. Conscious of his boundaries and apparent limits, you have been careful to reciprocate the gestures.  
Kurloz thinks it is absolutely hysterical that you have been dating another man, in college, the first year no less, and haven’t had so much as a hand-job yet. You’re running out of retorts, actually.  
It is true, it is strange. Frustrating. At some time, especially when he has pulled back when only moments before you were certain he would continue forward, for once, when you’re so crazed with desire it makes you want to bite through your own tongue in an effort to keep quiet about it.  
You are not suffering here, as much as you could be. What is important is that Cronus goes at his own pace, right? He’ll be ready when he is ready, and no sooner.  
Apart from that, things have been wonderful.  
‘Dating’ has always been a strange concept to you. Selecting an ideal partner with whom to roam the city, eating here and staring at art there. It’s just weird to you. Alright, a good way to get to know someone, you will give the ritual that. What you don’t understand is why so many people find the prospect of a movie date so attractive. With the social interactions that a date requires removed, in favour of a bunch of acted lives and stories rather than the story happening in front of the couple, well, what is the point? Porrim says it gives her something to talk about later on, while Damara has pointed out many times the ideal opportunities for some public canoodling.  
Luckily for you, Cronus shares your opinions on the validity of a movie as a date, so most of the one so far have involved art galleries and museums. He is also quite partial to taking long walks at night. Cronus never out-right says what it is about the city at night that he prefers over the city during the day, but you suspect from little hints and clues that he has unknowingly peppered your conversations with that it is the quiet and the lack of crowds that he likes. The two of you now have a route, of sorts, that takes you off-campus and along the canal for a few streets. You have no fear of being attacked on these walks, although your city is not famed for the safety of its streets. It is hard to feel anything but safe and treasured when you’re with Cronus. Well, except for confusion.  
He is exceptionally good when it comes to confusing you.  
Amusing you as well. For example, on one of your dates you ended up sitting on the edge of an artificial lake of sorts that the city had built into one of the parks to brighten the place up. The pond there was stocked with beautiful koi fish that you enjoyed watching when you came here by yourself. When you showed them to Cronus, the fish immediately swam together to where he stood and followed him all the way around the lake. Cronus went between talking to you and scolding the fish for following him.  
He flapped his hands helplessly, crying “Begone, you little shits!” which did nothing to improve the situation.  
When he eventually got away from the lake, the fish lingered at the side, as if waiting for him to come back. You suppose a magnetism for fish suits the wave patterns on his arms. And you have discovered that slight scent of sea salt (entirely independent from any kind of sweaty smell, thank you very much) is a permanent thing. It clings to him stubbornly, even after he just come out of the shower.  
You are curious to see if his scent would persist in the shower, but obviously it will be some time before you find that out.  
The sound of the shower running is driving you crazy. To think- if things were different, you could go in there and watch him. Get in with him, if you wanted to. It’s easy to tell what a great body Cronus has, what with the way his wardrobe clasps onto every single contour of his shape. You have since discussed this with Loz, as best as you were able, and have discovered that you are kind of hyper-aware of the way Cronus looks. Loz tells you that you often look at him as if the sheer force of your stare might be enough to peel every last stitch from Cronus. You can’t pretend you haven’t imagined this a couple of times.  
But, no. Cronus has clear limits and boundaries and it is nothing short of indecent to try to flout those.  
BUT YOU REALLY WANT TO.  
But you won’t.  
That would throw away the last four months, in a way, wouldn’t it? If you refused to respect him, you would objectify him and completely disregard the wonderful and slightly obnoxious personality you have grown to love.  
So you distract yourself on his computer. As soon as he comes out, the two of you are going to watch an arthouse movie he’s heard rave reviews about. Cronus has a taste for subcultures, to add to all his other oddities. He takes an almost forced interest in pop culture, but it is on the indie side of music and movies where he thrives. Almost like a biologist developing a favourite among their sample group- you think of him as Jade Goodall liking one gorilla better than all the others. Often, that bleeds over into musings that contrast Cronus from your friends and your world overall. Some days, you can’t help but feel like his favourite gorilla.  
While you wait for him to finish up, you’re watching an episode of this anime he has also recently started. Something about it terrifies him so that he has asked you to spend the night in his room several times because of it. You’re not about to complain…except about the pressure to remain celibate and a gentleman when you are stretched out sleepless with Cronus pressed into your side or slung across you, using your chest as a pillow. Thank God Cronus is so sound a sleeper that he would never be woken by anything like an awkward boner pressing into his stomach.  
If that were all it took to rouse him, he would have been woken up three times last night alone.  
Lucky for you, when Cronus steps out of the bathroom to retrieve his jeans in nothing but a towel and a shy smile, you’re so absorbed by the anime that you don’t even notice him until you catch sight of him retreating into the bathroom out of the corner of your eye. You are still cursing yourself for missing the chance to drool when he comes out, freshly scrubbed and smelling wonderful.  
He stoops and slings his arms around your shoulder, moving one of the cups of the headphone to purr “Any good?”  
Take me now, you think “It is incredibly engaging.”  
He rubs a small circle just underneath your collarbone with his thumb “Ya see w-why this has had me afraid ta sleep on my own?”  
“Yes,” you mumble, melting under his touch.  
No. No, you will not become a sloppy mess. You will be entirely conscious for this date.  
Cronus gestures to the couch. Thanks to his glaring lack of roommate (you still wonder about that, when there’s a group of three just down the hall having to share a space designed for two), he has enough space for a large couch and a decently-sized TV, which your friends often avail themselves of. You go to the couch and open a bag of chips while Cronus puts in the movie. Seeing what you have, he frowns at you.  
“So much salt, babe.”  
“I’ll take my chances with water retention.”  
Cronus nods “Gotcha. Jus’ don’t let any ‘a those in my mouth, or I’m gonna eat the w-whole bag.”  
There’s a bowl of grapes on the coffee table in front of the couch, obviously intended as a healthy alternative to the snacks you are happy to scarf. Some day your metabolism will catch up with you and the chemicals and preservatives you have stuffed your body with will make you glow in the dark, but for now you are content to eat whatever you want and feel none of the adverse affects.  
Besides, you’re a goddamned college kid. If you can cook it quickly and cheaply, it’s going in your stomach.  
Days off free from school-work like this are a rare luxury and you intend to enjoy yourself. Even if being alone with Cronus for so long means you are going to have to consistently fill your mind with all of the images that turn you off. Mitt Romney in a string bikini, wild boars, that repeating nightmare where you run over a priest, a cow giving birth and Nicolas Cage trying to kiss you while bees are crawling through his sinuses.  
The Nic Cage image alone is enough to keep you cold and limp for the first half of the movie.  
You are essentially sitting in Cronus’s lap, which doesn’t necessarily help matters. One arm is wrapped loosely around your waist, while the other is free to feed himself or you grapes. His knees are on either side of you, framing you like a king on his throne.  
King on his throne. What a wonderful way to phrase it. Nic Cage slips from your mind and you welcome another fantasy into your mind. Then you catch yourself and imagine Romney having one of those slow-motion Baywatch shots in the skimpiest and tightest string bikini possible.  
“Ew.” you shudder.  
“Bad grape?”  
“No…never mind. It’s nothing.”  
Is it your imagination, or is Cronus’s hand gravitating south? It has to be your imagination. You’re just a little bit drunk off being this close to him while his hair is still damp and his- oh, wow, nope, ok, he is definitely massaging your thigh right now.  
In your mind, you hear a heavenly chorus. Eros himself steps down from a cloud, clad in one of those convenient censoring sheets about the nether-regions and shakes your hand. Well done, he says as the heavenly host applauds, you earned this moment.  
Cronus is encouraged by the lack of complaint and the way your breath hitches in your throat. His hand climbs a little higher while the other slips underneath your shirt. The noise of the movie falls into the background, and you become painfully aware of the sound of your racing pulse and his racing pulse and how much and how long you have wanted this.  
He leans around your shoulder and tilts your head back. His mouth tastes of grapes, for obvious reasons.  
“Is this ok?” you whisper.  
He nods, still shy and quiet “’Course. I’v-ve…there are some things ya need ta know-w ‘bout me…but that can w-wait.”  
“What do I need to know?” you’re about to launch into a tirade about how little you will care, unless it turns out he is a convicted killer or sex offender.  
Cronus silences you by unzipping your fly.  
“I can teach ya how ta breathe underw-water, if ya want.”  
He chuckles at your bemusement and pushes your back to the couch.

Kankri Vantas: where are you now? ===========>

Karkat is here.  
Was here. A moment ago. A day ago. Days ago. Your sense of time is completely shot. You have no idea of what’s going on or where you are or when you became able to breathe.  
You are aware of only two things, in this expansive, suffocating darkness you seem to be trapped in.  
One: your brother was here.  
He was in your head, the way the two of you might share a bench.  
He was in your head and he was extremely upset about something. You wish you knew what, but most of your efforts are concentrated on just breathing. Oxygen- if it is really oxygen- bleeds into your lungs, as if brought in in dainty sips through a straw.  
Two: your ring is gone.  
It’s funny. You have little to no feeling for the rest of your body. In fact, it feels as if your legs are gone entirely. But you can feel the missing ring so clearly. It hasn’t moved from your finger since you put it there, except for swimming and washing the dishes.  
Where has it gone?  
More importantly, where are you?  
Most importantly, where is Cronus?  
You start to search.

 

Karkat Vantas: wake up in a cold sweat ============>

You do that.  
You wake up with sweat on you like a second skin and a sleepily concerned Gamzee hanging over you.  
“Bad dreams?” he asks.  
You nod, swallowing on a dry throat “I just…fuck. I don’t know what to think about Kankri being gone.”  
Gamzee wrestles away some of the covers you have wound yourself up in like a mummy and lies on his side, his chin propped up on a hand “’member when we was young an’ magic was a law ta y’all?”  
‘Remember when we were young’ is a phrase that has cropped up today. Every time you hear it, it’s another needle driven into your heart. Maybe, if you weren’t such a reclusive, anti-social asshole, the phrase would be ‘remember last week’ or ‘remember last year’.  
“Yeah.”  
“I’m guessin’ yer too old fer magic now, yeah?”  
You wince. Is it really so fucking obvious that you have become a barren, waste of a desert of emotion and affection to him? Being here, in Gamzee’s teenager’s bedroom, reclining on his bed while you reminisce and dodge smartly around any mention of what the last years have been like, is the first thing you have done that has felt right in a very long time.  
You find yourself agreeing “I am.”  
“Yeah, but maybe magic don’t care. Ya know. Maybe yer getting’ yer psychic on an’ yer searchin’ fer Kankri. I tell you what, I totally believe in that family psychic shit, right there. See, when Loz had his accident, ‘an before me an’ the ol’ man knew a thin’ ‘bout it we jus’ looked up at each other. Like ‘you feel that?’ an’ Dad tells me he thinks Loz is in trouble, so I’m like call him, an’ the second he reaches for the phone it rings an’ it’s Kankri tellin’ us ‘bout it.”  
He finishes with an awkward gesture “So, like…maybe this is all up an’ the same deal with y’all, brother.”  
“Maybe.” you say despondently “Gamzee…you know I wanted to… I wanted to say a lot of things to you. The next time I saw you.”  
Suddenly, he grows cold, in that subtle, stiff way that he has perfected from your childhood “I didn’t figure y’all had plans ta see me at all again.”  
“Oh, come on. Be…well, no, fuck. You’re right. I’m an ass.”  
“An’ since y’all didn’t tell no one that y’all were up an’ comin’ back down either…sorry.”  
“It’s my fault. I just ignored you all. I never sent you my new address. I…I was planning to run away for a little while, you know. When I was fourteen I was having a shit of time in school with these fucking rumours and these fucking bullies and all this…this shit…and I thought about running away to come back here because this was the happiest I had ever been. Everyone tells you when you move that it’s a great adventure and they make you feel like some swashbuckling asshole with a bandana and a pirate ship and a testy love-hate relationship with a noble hero, but…but it wasn’t like that for me. It wasn’t ever better. Every day I woke up I felt like I did the first day I left home.”  
Sniffing, you wipe your eyes hastily on the sleeve of your borrowed pyjama shirt “I didn’t do it. I got too scared about being abducted and all that horrible stuff you hear about happening to run-aways. I was always too fucking scared to make things better for myself and it’s my fault I’m like this now. I’m just…I’m really messed up. I’m sorry. Your package took, like, a detour of years and got kicked around by the mail-people and dropped off the backs of a few trucks.”  
Gamzee has been listening quietly to all of this, but now he laughs and reaches across the sheets to hug you. Hard. Squeezes the breath right out of you and presses his face into your chest and sighs like he’s in too much pain to speak.  
God, what happened to you?  
What happened to him? How did the two of you let this happen to you?  
What even is it that happened to you?  
When you left the town, it was like your vision went colourless. You still can’t tell if this black-and-white world is an invention of your own stubborn refusal to settle, or if that refusal to settle has come from the black-and-white lens.  
You don’t know what to do, except to lie with Gamzee and hold him and just hope that you never let anything tear you away from him again.  
And wonder if this is what it feels like to be in love.

Lezlee Vantas: deal with impending crises ===============>

His name is Graa’ant Makara, and God, you forgot how easily this guy can make you laugh.  
He’s had you in stitches several times in the last hour, even though the subject matter is anything but light and funny. Though the two of you haven’t seen each other in the flesh for close to eight years, it is like you never left.  
The last eight years have been kind to him as well. Now that he is snugly nestled into his late thirties you thought he would at least have a belly on him, like you do. Somehow, he does not, which makes you kind of mad. His face is essentially the same, with deeper smile-lines and the odd crow’s foot at the corners of his eyes. He obviously hasn’t let any hairdresser do real damage to his hair yet either, because his ponytail is still dripping between his shoulder-blades.  
“Wait a fuckin’ minute…so you explained everythin’. Ev’ry last little detail.”  
You shake your head “No, not every last detail. In fact, I gave him a pretty damned vague account. I just mentioned that I knew his father.”  
“Lemme guess- you tol’ the poor kid y’all only knew him fer one summer ‘fore the cruel tides a fate an’ destiny whisked y’all apart again.”  
You feel yourself colour a little “Not those exact words!”  
Graa’ant rolls his dark eyes “Still a hopeless romantic, I see.”  
“Still pining after Lee, I see.” you shoot back.  
Now it is his turn to colour “You gossip. Whatever rumours y’all’ve been gettin’ off the town’s rumour mill, I assure y’all, ev’ry last one is motherfucking falsification.”  
“You two were sleeping together all the way through high-school.” you point out civilly.  
“Yeah, well, ev’ryone wanted ta sleep with Lee in high-school. I just got lucky ‘cos I had the biggest dick. Let’s move the fuck on, shall we? Onta the life threatenin’ crisis? We can catch up later ‘bout who’s sleepin’ with whom.”  
Reluctantly, you nod. The atmosphere grows serious once again.  
“So, I’m guessin’ this kinda…this kinda shit is clear sign that the old bitch is back, yeah?”  
You shrug “I’m no expert, Graa’ant. Cary told me a lot about his world, but not a lot more than he ever told you.”  
Graa’ant looks perturbed at this “I woulda thought he shared more ‘bout his troubles with y’all than he ever spoke ta us ‘bout. I mean, in the five weeks he was under the same roof as you, he really never let anythin’ big slip?”  
You shake your head “He was well-trained Graa’ant. Extraordinarily well-trained. In fact, I would have said that whoever trained him did so with excruciating pain as the deterrent against-”  
He snorts. Scandalised, you glare at him.  
“Sorry, sorry. S’just, I fuckin’ missed this. Fuckin’ missed y’all gettin’ up on yer ‘I know ev’rythin’’ horse. It just ain’t the same over the phone, ya know?”  
Biting down on a smile, you fix him with a cool stare “Stay on topic, please.”  
He gestures for you to continue, still laughing behind his hand.  
“To make a long story short, he didn’t talk much about himself. He was more focused on learning about me and this world.”  
Graa’ant rests his chin on his hand and stares at the grain of the kitchen table “Ain’t that somethin’, though. Three generations ‘a that family in yer house.”  
The uncanny coincidence has been weighing on your mind for a while, too.  
What are the odds of all three of the Ampora men being washed up on your doorstep, of all places? You would feel more at peace with the situation if Cronus knew about his father’s past, but he did not once complain that you were telling a half-truth, or, blatantly lying, as you were. So he hasn’t got the faintest idea of what his father did for the underwater world. Or what he did for you.  
Well, it doesn’t surprise you that Cary never admitted what he did to his children. If you can help it, you will certainly never tell Kankri and Karkat the truth.  
There are some things children don’t need to know about their parents.  
“She took him.”  
Graa’ant looks up “How do y’all know?”  
“Because who the fuck else would take him? It’s…there’s just no one else I can think of that would want to steal him, and if you think about what he is…who he’s married to, for God’s sake, then it makes perfect sense. She’s going to try to tempt Cronus back into the ocean.”  
“Think it’ll work?”  
“Dear God, I hope he’s not that stupid.”  
Then of course, because both of you are on the most extreme point of the metaphorical ‘edge’, there is a hammering at the door.

Cronus: who’s that on the beach? ============>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pardon the sloppy characterisation of the Ancestors.  
> The Grand Highblood is nowhere near murderous or scandalous enough.The Signless is not as sassy as he should be. Maybe they're both just too tired?


	17. In which Lezlee Vantas proves he has no right to criticise Kankri for bedding another man

Lezlee Vantas: interrupt =========>

What, the nice people thought they were going to get a bit more domestic angst from your son-in-law? No way. He’s monopolised sixteen chapters so far. It’s your turn.  
So sit down, audience, you say, it’s story time.

Lezlee Vantas: bust the myth that drowning is easy ===========>

Your name is Lezlee Vantas and you’re about to die.  
Not painlessly either. Whoever said that drowning was the most peaceful way to die had obviously not tried it for themselves.  
This is what happened: you were walking home along the beach as night neared and were distracted from your musings by muffled thuds and what sounded like somebody suppressing a screaming woman. Upon inspection, these noises proved to be the soundtrack of a murder. The woman perpetuating the murder realised she had an audience shortly after she delivered the finishing blow. Were you a taller, more intimidating person, the fact that you are a man might be enough to scare her off alone.  
But you’re a fourteen-year-old child and your friends refer to you as the ‘forgotten Disney princess’ due to your petite size, so you were not about to try fighting this woman off. Especially not when she hefted the wet knife she had used for the victim that was making a red slurry of the dune around her. You ran like a bat out of hell, shedding your backpack and jacket as you went. They are still somewhere up on the dunes, a good quarter mile back. Hopefully whoever finds them will have the good sense to peg you as another victim, rather than the murderer.  
Running on sand is about as easy and steady in terms of progress as running on ice. You figured two seconds after you hit the sand that you were going to be in serious trouble if you tried to run from this woman. And there was nothing to do but run, with no lights in sight over the dunes and the town too far to hear your screams before she caught up to you.  
So you didn’t run.  
You swam.  
You’re a strong swimmer, for having lived in this coastal town all your life.  
The woman must not be from your town. For one thing, you’re sure that no one in your town would ever murder someone, let alone even think about the crime seriously.  
And you’re also sure that you’re going to die.  
The woman isn’t even there anymore. When you first ran into the water you heard her splash a little of the way in after you. Maybe she knows what you know- how dangerous it is to be in the water at night. Sharks, stronger currents, complete darkness and frigid temperatures…  
Eh. Fuck it. You’d rather stay caught in this riptide with what seems to be the entirety of the ocean trying to force itself into your mouth than on the beach, within her reach.  
The ocean has sucked you far out. The darkness all around means that you cannot tell which way is the shore and which way is the open ocean. Black, powerful waves toss you around. Each time you are caught in a gutter or pushed under, you resign yourself to going under and staying under. And each time, you pop back up.  
This isn’t fair, you think.  
You’re too young to die like this. You’re too young to die, full stop. Children only die of sickness or war or domestic abuse. Not of drowning in the middle of a pitch-black night, where clouds enshroud the stars and the water is so cold it feels like razors on your skin.  
“Please…” you manage.  
You aren’t sure to whom the plea is addressed, but it would be really nice if someone responds.  
The swell of a wave hits you from behind and pushes your head under. Screwing your eyes shut against the sting of the salt, you see a string of flashing lights behind your eyelids.  
What is that, oxygen deprivation? An effect of swallowing all the water?  
The force of the wave is off you now. You scramble in the darkness, not knowing which way is up or down. Against all the odds, you break through the surface again. Coughing and spitting up water, your mouth burned by the taste of salt.  
And you are glowing.  
The light that was beneath your eyelids has somehow leaked out onto your skin, as if illuminating you from underneath. It is bright, purplish and…and it’s not some trick from a panicked brain, either.  
There is a light beneath you, and a creature emitting it. The creature glows, ghostly, suspended in the water like a wraith. The lights line its sides and chest and are sprayed in pinpricks across a surprisingly human torso. It looks up at you. Its eyes are luminous.  
The ocean stills, as if on command.  
The lights rise, and along with it, your heart rises into your mouth. You become aware of another body coming very close to yours in the water. The terror is too much, so you close your eyes. With a deep breath, you tell yourself you are hallucinating. This is what impending death does to people. It ruins their minds and tricks their perceptions of reality. One last, cruel joke from the old grey matter, right?  
There is a slight, delicate splash as something rises out of the water right in front of you. Somewhere beneath you, water is churned and whipped by something like a tail.  
“Ya drow-wnin’, or somethin’?”  
You open your eyes.  
In front of you is a boy who can’t be much older than you. His face is ablaze with the light of dozens of small spots of lights- like freckles that glow- and his skin is an unnatural, greyish colour that makes your stomach flip. His eyes are hooded drowsily. He peers out at you from a curtain of wet hair plastered over his face, regarding you with the kind of disdain you normally reserve for people drunk in public. Also, going by his bare shoulders, he has no clothes on.  
You decide you must tell him something “Your freckles are glowing.” just in case he hasn’t noticed yet.  
And then you are overwhelmed by exhaustion and you close your eyes, happy to finally have an excuse to sink into the blackness of unconsciousness.

 

Lezlee Vantas: play ‘getting to know you’ with the mermaid ==========>

He declines to tell you his name.  
One day, you are determined to wring it out of him. Perhaps during one of his weak moments? For the last eight months or so, the two of you have been meeting on peaceful, private stretch of beach in front of your house at night-fall. You have tried to make these twice-weekly meetings without fail, but you do have other friends. Your entire life does not revolve around these trysts, and while the mer is beyond interesting and entertaining and just so alien in so many engaging ways to you, he is not yet your best friend.  
Graa’ant is your best friend. Sometimes you just want to sit indoors, struggling for room on your own damned couch as Graa’ant’s rapidly elongating limbs take up more and more space- puberty has been far more generous to him than it has been to you.  
And sometimes he has other things to do. He is a mer, after all, and mers are apparently always busy with some kind of magical nonsense or a hunt.  
You suspect he may also be some kind of prince, from the way he complains about his responsibilities. He and his mother don’t get along. He refuses to call her ‘Mom’ (you had to translate that word from his vague, confused description of the word he was going for when you didn’t understand the high-pitched series of chirps and squeaks he first employed), and instead refers to her by her first name.  
Today, when you jog down to the rock near the water where you normally meet, he is already stretched out languid and relaxed on the wet half of the rock. He’s got that face on that suggests that all you’re going to hear about today are the new, horrible rules she has imposed upon him.  
Stripping off your shirt to avoid getting it wet, you sit down beside him and brace yourself for the whingeing that is to come.  
He cuts to the chase “Eridan fucked me up again.”  
“Oh yeah?” you say patiently.  
You are used to listening to this sort of stuff already. God knows that Graa’ant and his parents don’t get along at all, and this week Reggie threatened to run away from home for the fifth time this year. She’s probably going to do it, the next time she threatens to do it.  
“She’s ruinin’ my life, step-by-step. I swear ta ya.”  
“What did she do this time?”  
“She ain’t gonna let me hunt.”  
This actually surprises and offends you “What? Bullshit! Who the hell is gonna chase the orcas and Giant Squid off if she dry-docks you?”  
He throws up his hands “I know-w, right? She’s lost her fuckin’ pan, I’m tellin’ ya! Ev-ven Bro’s pissed at her an’ he’s alw-ways like ‘ah shaddap you whining princeling at least you get an ivory tower’. I don’t know-w w-what I’m gonna fuckin’ do. If I can’t chase down and kill thin’s like, at least, twice a moon, I’m gonna lose my pan too.”  
From what you have gathered, Bro is his bodyguard. Bro appears to be short for Broderick, which unnerved you to realise. There are clear cultural parallels between your world and your friend’s. Similar concepts of time and of gods, almost identical family structures and a society whereby the ruling elite governs the common population as fairly as they are able to. Hunts and stories of great, ancient hunts. The odd war, mostly between warring tribes and factions trying to claim land from each other.  
Your friend lives in the centre of it all. The entire underwater word is ruled from his city, which he has also refused to name (you’re crossing your fingers it is called Atlantis), and from what he knows about the intimate inner-workings of the underwater world, well…he’s not as clever with his lies of omission as he thinks he is.  
“She…she doesn’t know about you and me, does she?”  
He looks like he has been hit in the face with a tennis racket “Uh…no. No I don’t think so. She ain’t the type ta hold her temper, ya know-w? If she knew-w ‘bout me bein’ all chummy with a land-pounder such as yerself, she w-wouldn’t w-wait to go mad at me.”  
You understand that terms such as ‘land-pounder’ and ‘dirt-sniffer’ are supposed to be racial slurs or something, but he employs them with such affection it’s more like being called ‘buddy’ or ‘chum’. He seems to bear no animosity towards you for being a land-dweller, which is the term he uses when he’s trying to be politically correct, but doesn’t like the way the two of you are trapped on the beach.  
You can only explore his world through his stories. Even the little, sneaking explorations into the human world that he has taken (following fishing boats at a safe distance, swimming under docks to listen to the people above complain about their bosses and wages and the like) is impossible for you, as it would be far too dangerous. This coast has a history of missing people. The last thing either of you want is for you to join their masses.  
“Eridan don’t ev-ven know I come out here. Bro found me out, but he didn’t tell her.”  
Your heart skips a beat “Bro found you out? Jesus fuck, when was that?!”  
He shrugs and flicks a large grain of sand off his grey shoulder “Like, four moons back. He doesn’t pay it much mind, though. In fact he covers my tail a lot of the time.”  
“You’re telling me that your loyal bodyguard, your best friend from birth, doesn’t care that you go to visit a human child who lives on a shore notorious for its fatality to mers? And its high population of fishers and shark attacks, on mers?”  
He wrinkles his nose in confusion “I thought ya said the fishin’ industry was collapsin’.”  
“It is.”  
“W-well, it ain’t gonna be much of a problem for v-very much longer, is it?”  
“He just lets you go out on your own?”  
He frowns, suddenly abashed “Didn’t say that. He’s here right now.”  
“Oh fucking hell. How long has he been here? Where the hell even is he?”  
He nods towards an outcropping of black rock a little ways down the shore. A few seconds after your eyes find the rock, you see a pale orange shape flop with the graceless movements of an exhausted fish onto the rock and spread himself out in the sun.  
It’s another mer. This one is pale-skinned, almost white like a Caucasian person except for grey tints around his shoulders and wrists, is spattered with those glow-in-the-dark freckles and has a nice head of white, light hair plastered to his skull.  
“Hey human.” his voice is disturbingly ordinary.  
The kind of voice you could answer in the street without fear of any kind.  
Your throat is dry “Yeah?”  
“Is it cool if you don’t kill him? Cary kept me up all fuckin’ night with this ridiculous escape plan I had to talk him down from, so I really need the Z’s.”  
“Broderick!” shrieks your friend “He didn’t know my fuckin’ name, ya plonk!”  
You place your hand over your heart “I won’t kill him.”  
The other mer seems to understand the gesture, because he shuts his orange eyes and folds an arm over them, sighing deeply.  
“Be good while I’m out, Cary.” he mutters.  
You turn to your friend, wearing the biggest grin you have ever worn “Your name is Cary?”  
Cary’s face lights up in a bright purple blush, which you didn’t know he could do “It’s Dualscar. He’s just an asshole an’ thinks it’s appropriate to nick-name his fuckin’ charge ‘cos he’s some kinda prodigy.”  
“Dualscar?” you repeat. You like Cary better.  
Sighing in disgust, Cary pushes his wet fringe back over his forehead and shows you twin ridges of white scar tissue. They zig-zag up and down and make it half-way across his forehad. It occurs to you that he must keep his hair long and flopping over his face at all times to avoid showing them off.  
“You were named after your scars?”  
“No I wasn’t. I w-was named for an ancient w-warrior of my people, then Eridan gav-ve me the scars ta justify her shitty namin’ skills. I’m tellin’ ya, if I ev-ver get unlucky enough ta get knocked up or knock someone else up, I ain’t namin’ ‘em embarassin’ shit like that.”  
You’re not even going to ask after the intricacies of mer biology that allow Cary to be worried about falling pregnant. Or about the rituals that encourage parents, even the royal parents, to scratch up their newborns.  
“What would you name your kids, then?”  
He furrows his brow, making the scars crease deeply “I dunno. I like Tritonicus.”  
“Bit of a mouthful, huh? Call him something for short.”  
He scoffs “There ain’t a nickname fer that name. Not like there is for mine.”  
You think for a moment “What about Cronus?”  
“What the fuck is a Cronus?”  
“Some Ancient Greek god that ate all his kids ‘cos he was afraid they’d take over his throne.”  
“Huh. Did they?”  
“It’s just a myth.”  
“The fuck’s a myth?”  
You spend the rest of the afternoon explaining the human systems of faith, myths and religion to an increasingly bewildered mermaid. He cannot believe that humans no longer worship their old, pagan gods, the ones with clear links to the elements with behavioural patterns that matched up to things like storms and the seasons. The concept of a big man in the sky stroking a snowy white beard in dismay while his world wrecks itself confuses him so much he actually gets the beginnings of a headache and has to take a short swim to work it off.  
While he swims, you watch the fluke of his tail flick in and out of the azure waves and marvel at how incongruous and strange this all is.  
If stranger things have happened then the little friendship blossoming right here on the beach, between a mermaid prince and a bored teenager with no other way to live vicariously, you don’t want to know about it.

Lezlee Vantas: welcome your new house-mate ==========>

You open the door onto your room, already cringing at the mess you find inside.  
That mess consists of two books and a school-bag, still barfing textbooks and notebooks onto the floor from where you dropped it yesterday, which was the last day of the school. Ok, so it’s not much of a mess and Cary couldn’t possibly notice the difference, but you have become very aware of messing up around him of late.  
Cary follows you into the room on unsteady legs. He has stopped needing help to walk, but is still wobbly as a fresh lamb on his new appendages. Legs are the dumbest propulsion instruments ever invented, he claims.  
“This is it.”  
His eyes are wide “Is that a fuckin’ coffin?”  
He points at your bed.  
Oh yeah, you forgot he doesn’t know what a bed is. Mers sleep in big tubs of slime that prevent them from drifting while they sleep, or having their minds invaded by these giant, squiggly monsters made of the darkness found at the bottom of oceanic trenches. Incidentally, these are the monsters Cary has had to flee the ocean in fear of.  
“No, that’s what I sleep in. Look, there’s one for you. Mom put an extra bed in here for when my friends come to visit, since I’ve got the space.”  
Cary eyes it suspiciously, but is quickly distracted by the shelves of books. He seems to know what a shelf is, but is bewildered again by the books. Cautiously, he eases one off the shelf with a fingertip and weighs the thing in his hand before cracking it open.  
“Are these slices of…of trees?” he stares in a mix of awe and horror “I’ve seen you readin’ stuff like this before, only I thought ya wrote yer stories down on seaweed scrolls like we do. How-w dumb am I? W-we’ve know-wn each other for, like, two…what is it? Years? Yeah, two and a bit of ‘em and I ain’t nev-ver ev-ven seen a book before.”  
Cary then figures out how to turn a page and is totally absorbed by the strange characters on the page. He can speak English like a native and knows a little bit of Farsi from what you have taught him, but has no idea of how to speak the language. You have scratched out the alphabet into the sand a couple of times, but it never held his interest for very long, once he had learned how to spell an approximation of his own name.  
“Are you going to be ok?”  
Cary looks up at you, his face suddenly grim “I’ll be fine. This….this is a point, ya know-w? This shore is a point w-where my folks gather w-when there’s trouble ‘cos this place is so dangerous that our enemies w-would nev-ver expect us to hide here. Thanks to Eridan, I got here ahead of the rush of evacuations…but more of us should be on the w-way.”  
What he told you about the disaster is scattered and cryptic as usual. You think one of the squiggly dark things crawled out of the trench his city was built over and wrapped itself around some buildings. Or it is about to, anyway, and his mother sent him and Bro ahead with some kind of magic to get them out of the water (on legs, no less!) before she began to evacuate the city properly.  
He washed up four days ago. Being his impulsive and stubborn self, he didn’t bother to wait for you to come before he ingested whatever it was that gave him the new legs.  
You found him in the sand, naked without his tail, with two perfectly formed legs attached to his waist in their place. Except, there was a long pair of scars between his legs, where his tail must have split. You tried not to stare too much between his legs. Rude as hell, that kind of unsolicited attention.  
Cary has spent the last two days languishing in a kind of consuming, carnivorous agony you have only ever seen in those cheesy, allegedly romantic movies where two people fall in love shortly after one of them has been diagnosed as terminal. You could do nothing but hold him, stay with him, and try to bring his fever down with a few wet wash-cloths, which were about as helpful as spraying a water gun on a burning factory. If you mother was here, she most certainly would have spirited him off to a hospital the second she saw him. You can only imagine what the doctors would have done upon seeing his gills.  
But, as luck and dumb coincidence would have it, your mother happens to be across the country right now. Your grandmother has fallen ill and demanded that her one and only daughter come to attend to her in her sickness, but declined to see you as well. You think she might be mad at your mother for not giving you the same, strict, fundamental Muslim upbringing that she gave her own children.  
Whatever, you don’t want to think about family dynamics. What scares you to think about is the fact that you could have easily been whisked to the other side of the country with no idea of Cary’s pains and troubles. He most certainly would have died then, on the beach. Of sunstroke, or he could have even been discovered by the things that were hunting him and dragged back into the sea to his death. Drowning is still an impossibility, since his gills remain set into the side of his neck. But a hundred terrible things could have happened and you would have never known- you would have just thought that he sickened of your friendship and dropped it, like a child losing interest in a toy that was formerly their favourite.  
Instead, he is trapped with you. Dependent on you for survival. Utterly and completely at your disposal into the foreseeable future. Why does that make you so happy, you wonder?

Cary adjusts to the new world in the way that only a predator adjusting rapidly to a new environment does. Survival is still his ultimate goal, so on the rare occasions he does venture outside the house with you in the sight of the town (you are introducing him as a distant cousin come to stay while his family visits the old country), he lets you do the talking and just smiles, pretending to have bad English.  
Every day, you thank God that your friends aren’t here to see him. Hana could probably figure out what was going on with him in a few seconds, and Graa’ant might even get jealous, with this stranger spending all his time under your roof. But the same twist of fate and luck that carried your mother away this summer has also scattered them across the world. You and Graa’ant write long letters to each other, which come about once a week. The two you have so far have been full of complaints of boredom, homesickness and, the way he puts it, ‘a bunch of hairy old Turks trying to tell me how to live my life’. The joys of family, right?  
You wish you could tell him that there’s a mer living with you. How you sometimes find him flushing out his gills in the sink, by sticking his head in it. How he sometimes fills up the bathtub to sleep in it, fully-clothed. What his smile is doing to his gut, and how the last thing you want to do to this friendship is ruin it by developing some obnoxious crush on your friend. Graa’ant would understand all about that- if there’s one thing he knows how to do, it’s how to stay in the closet about embarrassing crushes on best guy-friends.  
And finally, how your feelings seem determined to run away with you.  
And how much that really fucking sucks, because you know this niggling, romantic urge towards Cary is going to wreck the nice friendship going on right now.

In two weeks, he has heard nothing from his world.  
He deals with this by taking long walks on the beach, which make you incredibly anxious for his safety, and sleeping a lot so he doesn’t have to think about could be going on without his help at home.  
“See, there’s this thing we mers can do. W-we got this thing called dream bubbles, right? It’s like a little pocket of another dimension that belongs to us only, an’ we can store our shit in them if we need ‘em quick and don’t w-wanna bother carryin’ it all around. So, from the bubbles, you can make this little empathic connection. The idea is that yer partner is a bubble themselves, an’ you store a little bit of yerself in ‘em. You get me?”  
As usual when Cary was explaining something, you kept your mouth shut and nodded.  
“So the second Bro’s back w-within range of intelligent conversation, I’m gonna hear him in my head, ya understand? I’m still gettin’ little w-whispers from him an’ everythin’, but he’s real tired and distracted.”  
“Does that scare you?”  
Although you were alone, Cary leaned in and beckoned for you to come in close and muttered “Every single thing above the w-water scares me more than I can say.” 

It only takes you five weeks to mess up almost three years of friendship.  
Cary has stayed to his side of the room and more importantly, his bed, for most of the time. But lately, he has been having nightmares of fierce battles and bloodshed through Bro’s eyes. These chase him into your bed. You find him curled against you in the small hours of the morning, woken by his shivering or whimpering at whatever it is that torments him in his dreams. So many nights, you lie sleepless and sweating beside him, while he twitches and squirms. You never thought it was possible to process this intense, ferocious desire for someone else’s body like a calm and collected person while they are under-dressed in bed next to you.  
And in truth, you cannot do it for very long.  
It is about the fifth time he has sneaked into your bed when you reach across the sheets and close your hand around his. As luck would have it, this is the only time he has ever been awake at the same time as you.  
Somehow, he knows what you want. He drags you over to him and puts his lips to your jaw, then travels down your chest until he has an excuse to take off your pants.  
“So…not ta kill the mood or anythin’, but what the fuck do I do with this?” he asks, when he sees how you are downstairs.  
You show him.  
The next morning, you wake with a dull ache in your abdomen and a much more painful one in your chest, which tells you Cary has been gone for a long time. The bed has had time to grow cold on his side, and the clothes which he flung aside last night are gone. You manage to dress yourself and stumble downstairs, on the off-chance that he is just hiding in embarrassment at what you have done with each other. To each other.  
The house is, of course, empty. On the kitchen table, there is a hasty note scrawled on a receipt from the gas station.  
“’Heard him,’” you read aloud “’Had to go. See you around.’”  
You sit there for a long time, unable to think clearly or to bring yourself to move.  
After a while, you go back upstairs and retrieve one of the shirts he has worn a few times over the last week- one of the baggiest ones you had, to accommodate his bigger frame. You pull it on and decide that it still smells of him. Of sea salt and other things that are uniquely Cary. Putting it on again is going to overwhelm his scent with yours, but you are willing to deal with that. If it means that you can feel as if you are still surrounded by him today, you can at least get through tomorrow.  
The next day, Graa’ant turns up without warning on your doorstep. It takes about two minutes for you to collapse and tell him everything.

Lezlee Vantas: reunite ========>

“Three years is a long time, is all I’m saying.”  
Graa’ant shrugs “Well, maybe he’s ok. Maybe the brother does remember y’all an’ yer little…little teenage tryst on dry-land, or whatever that was. Y’all seem pretty determined to write him off as an ass.”  
“He was an ass.” you point out “All of my friends were asses, but he was the worst kind. I mean…even if the kingdom was seconds away from disaster, he could have woken me up to let me know he would be gone in the morning. I can’t even tell you how worried I was after he left. You saw how worried I was. I thought he had been kidnapped and forced to write the letter. I thought he had been pranking me the entire time just to get into my pants-”  
Graa’ant interjects “I thought y’all said y’all knew it weren’t no lie from the look on him, or somethin’.”  
“Well I did, but-”  
“An’ think ‘bout all them storms we been gettin’ up in our faces the last couple years, yeah? Maybe that’s a sign of a mer war or some shit like that. Hell, we gettin’ a hurricane next week.”  
At the mention of the approaching hurricane, the wind seems to pick up a cue. It begins to blow harder and tugs roughly at your jacket. While it is true that the summer storms have been getting more intense every year, you are hesitant to attribute it to any kind of mer-magic interference.  
You are hesitant to give Cary any kind of credit, or think about him very much. His sudden departure left as many scars as if you had had a bandage ripped from a fresh wound, rather than had a friend you slept with once leave you unexpectedly.  
It sucks.  
“Speaking of the hurricane, do you want to come over to my house for it?”  
“Oh fuck, yes please. Anythin’ to get me outta the fuckin’ house. The ‘rents are drivin’ me up the motherfuckin’ wall, an’ they mean ta do it this time. I think my mom knows that them sleep-overs with Lee ain’t all innocence and games.”  
You give him a devious grin “I was under the impression that the two of you played plenty of games.”  
He narrows his eyes and aims a gentle cuff at you “You, sir, ain’t worthy ‘a holdin’ my secrets.”  
Two things happen at once, after that. A strong gust of wind pushes into you and Graa’ant, as strong as a host of cold hands at your back. And a familiar voice says your name.  
“Lezlee.”  
Feeling a cold prickle climb your spine, you turn towards the surf. Amongst the choppy waves, a grey-skinned, broad-shouldered man watches you. A mess of dark hair is plastered over his face, but you recognise those eyes easily enough.  
“Speak of the devil,” you mutter “And he shall appear.”  
Cary Ampora draws himself a little further out of the water, his chest scarred and pitted with the souvenirs of many battles.  
He opens his mouth, his shark-like teeth glistening a watery red “I need your help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what it is with my fics and furtive gay sex, but it always happens.


	18. On the beach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting onto 20 chapters now. I honestly can't believe the amount of support- so many people are interested in this rambling, repetitive story I'm kind of just spewing all over the place, and I can't thank my poor audience for that enough. Thanks, guys. It all means a lot.

Cronus Vantas: who’s that on the beach? ===========>

Your name is Cronus Vantas and you wake up in a cold sweat.  
In the darkness, you grope at the other side of the bed for your husband. It takes a moment for you to note the facts: the cold side of the bed, the fact that you still have covers when he normally bunches himself up in them and refuses to share. And to put them all together…  
He’s gone.  
Oh yeah. He got taken away, didn’t he?  
The proof of it is sitting on the nightstand. You have been carrying his wedding ring around with you, unwilling to let it out of your sight. When you sleep, it goes on the nightstand. Tomorrow, you plan to dig up a spare chain from your wardrobe and to make a necklace of it, so you can stop worrying about holes in your pockets.  
What was it that you were dreaming about? You roll over onto your side and stare at the empty half of the bed. Well, doesn’t take a genius to guess. Kankri has been gone for a few days now. The wards are up now, so if whatever took him decides to come back for you, it won’t be able to sneak up. It will have to face you. When that happens, you fully intend to kill it with your bare hands and teeth.  
You scoop Kankri’s pillow up and hug it to your chest, missing his warmth. Falling asleep with his gaping absence is such a challenge that you thought the night was going to be a sleepless one. But your mind was just too tired, you think, from everything it had had to process.  
Your husband missing. Your brother, returning tailless in the arms of a kid you know well. The rain that dissolved flesh. The phones are down, so you can’t call your friends.  
And also, apparently, your father used to meet up with Lezlee Vantas on this very fucking beach to talk when they were kids. You’re not sure how to feel about that. Mostly because you have not thought about it. There’s just too fucking much going on.  
You mutter his name, in the dark.  
Beyond the room, you can hear the ocean pounding away at the shore. Whispering and slurping, like an animal prowling up and down the sand.   
You remember a night shortly after you and Kankri moved in. You remember that you felt for him that night too, although this time you were well aware of his safety. Just confused by his absence. You looked up and found him framed in the moonlight streaming in through the window. He stared at the sea with a look of absolute concentration.  
You propped yourself up on your elbows and asked “See somethin’ cool?”  
He shrugged “I’m not certain what I am seeing. The ocean is glowing.”  
Getting up from the bed, you dragged the blanket with you and draped it over him, noting that he had been shivering. The ocean was glowing. Pulsing, in fact, by the light of a school of fish you could clearly see from where you stood.  
“They call those…I guess it would be fire-fish, up here. They’re kinda like your fire-flies. Don’t usually see them in w-water this shallow.”  
“You don’t think it’s a sign from your home?”  
You shucked his chin “I am home.”  
For that, you got to take him back to bed and keep him up for a little while longer.   
What are you going to do without him? How are you supposed to keep getting up and going on, knowing that he isn’t there? Knowing that the whole town knows he isn’t there. For now, the town has mostly ground to a halt. There’s not much to do, when the power supply flickers on and off of its own accord, and the phones cannot be made to work. Some have already left in search of family members outside the town, but most have stayed. The last day has been the worst in your recent memory, and you have had some pretty terrible days.  
Suddenly, the bed feels suffocating. The blankets are hundreds of pounds, determined to crush you flat into the mattress. You fling them off and get to your feet, wrapping your arms around yourself. The night is not that cold, but to you, the room seems to be well beneath freezing. You go to the window and are surprised to find the rest of the world is actually still out there.  
Shouldn’t it be gone? Dead and withered? Melted, maybe, in the burning rain?  
It seems somewhat rude, illicit, even, that the rest of the world attempts to carry on as normal with sunsets and moonrises and tides coming in and out when someone so invaluable has gone missing.  
Pressing your forehead to the glass, you let out a deep, pained sigh.  
How are you going to keep going like this? You have been skulking behind the charms and wards for less than half a day, and already, you know you have wasted too much time.  
Wherever Kankri is right now, it’s a safe bet to say he’s terrified and in pain and has no idea who the people holding him captive are. You have a rough idea, and if you’re right, then he’s in so much more trouble than he could ever realise. The woman you’re sure has him could have the entire sea at her disposal, if she steals the right tools. If she’s around again, that means your entire family is in deep, deep trouble. Your friends too: the Striders, Kanaya, John and Jane, Terezi and Vriska and more than a city’s worth of other mers, because once this woman gets going she is unlikely to stop until the entire sea is subjugated at her flukes.  
Oh, Gog.  
Is this your fault?  
Some of it has to your fault. The last five years have been the textbook example of a taboo. The sweetest taboo there ever was, but there are reasons why there are laws against it that go beyond plain old xenophobia.  
You’re about to go back to the bubble in the shoebox, but something stops you. Something glues you to the window and robs the warmth from your skin, and forces your eyes open, to the darkened beach. Where the beach was empty and dark before, there is now a smear of glowing light beneath the water. You tense, ready to leap to your brother’s defence- and Sol’s too, man, they had better not be making out down there while you fight for their lives.  
Whatever is casting the glow breaks through the rough surf, heading straight for the beach. It moves in an unnaturally smooth, gliding fashion for something that has to cut through dark and heavy water to move. A shiver climbs your spine as the scent of magic fills your nose. Whatever is down there, it is strong.  
You can’t stay here any longer. Bolting through the house, you throw the front door wide open and make a dash for the beach, not caring that you have left the door gaping on its hinges. You’re on the sand in a matter of seconds. The speed of your old body translated well into this one, even if steering this clumsy column on two legs is the dumbest trick evolution every pulled on any hapless species. By the time you reach the water, the thing has reached the sand.  
The small figure stands there, dripping sea water and shedding a bright light that blots their shape out. You have to shield your eyes against it and the moonlight and squint, keeping your distance, before you finally realise who you are looking at.  
He takes a step forwards.  
You take a step back “Stay away from me.”  
He reaches out to you “Cronus…”  
“I’ve seen this trick a hundred times. I’v-ve pulled it myself a few-w times. You ain’t foolin’ me.”  
It can’t be him, can it?  
The colour of his skin is grey, like yours once was, but the veins are all swamped and bloated and burst under his skin. His lips are blue. His hair is tangled and crisped with sea-salt, and a piece of seaweed has woven into it like a ribbon. His clothes have gone dark with water and age, as if he has been beneath the waves for years instead of a few days.  
“Cronus…” his voice is cracked and wet.  
You feel bile in your throat “No. No, it’s not you. I’m not fuckin’ buyin’ it. Stay the hell back.”  
Surprisingly, he does stop. His shoulders slump, as if he is wounded by the rejection.  
“No.” you repeat “You’re not him. I’m….I’m not that fuckin’ dumb. I can smell the curse on you.”  
“They drowned me.”  
“You’re alive. No, he’s alive. I know he’s alive.”  
“It was so cold.”  
You clamp your hands over your ears “Shut up!”  
“Cronus, please. Help me.”  
All at once, he turns on his heel and shambles back into the water. The light about him turns black and flickers on and off, like a light-bulb getting ready to burst. In spite of yourself, you start forward.  
“Kan-” but you stop yourself.  
That is not him.  
The figure retreats into the water, taking the dying light with it. He casts one last, dead-eyed fish glance over his shoulder at you. And then the water swallows him up.  
“Kankri.”  
For a long time, you stand on the beach, unsure of what to do. The trail of footprints he left are deep and full of black, filthy water, the kind that is dredged up from the silt at the very bottom of the ocean. The scent of a curse is unmistakable, but so is the smell of death.  
That didn’t just happen, did it?  
No, it didn’t. You just imagined all of that, right?  
After a while, there is nothing to do but stumble back towards the house, your mind in a fog of grief, and your body carrying you on automatic to the bed again.

College! Kankri: take your man to the beach ============>

Your name is Kankri Vantas, and you kind of can’t believe this is happening. How did it happen, anyway? This certainly wasn’t your idea- you are familiar with Cronus’s aversion to getting into the water, and things pertaining to the ocean such as aquariums and pools, so you would never go as far as to force him near something that makes him so profoundly uncomfortable. Cronus has made this strange decision entirely by his own judgement.  
In the middle of last night, he rolled you over onto your back and kissed your stomach to wake you up. You have had the time to grow used to having Cronus hanging over you, or stretched out on top of you. Every time, it still makes you smile and fills your chest with a warmth that sometimes hurts, and it did that time.   
“Can you be ready in ten?”  
You let him make his way up your neck with his mouth, and couldn’t supress a giggle when he stopped at your jaw and grazed you with his teeth “I suppose so. What for?” then you caught a glimpse of the alarm clock and realised how dark the room still was “Oh my goodness, it’s 4 in the morning! We only went to bed four hours ago!”  
“Sorry, am I messin’ w-with your sleep hygiene?”  
“You most certainly are.”  
“Want to go back to sleep?”  
“Well I’m awake now, and I’m also curious.”  
“Good, let’s get goin’.”  
In a few minutes, you were packed into the car with a few provisions and one of Cronus’s sweaters to keep the cold at bay. He drove out of the campus, dodging your questions playfully until you hit the main road.  
“Hey, Kanny. Tell me the weirdest thing you can about your body.”  
You thought for a moment “You already know most of my body at this point. I expect you would be able to tell me.”  
He put a hand on your knee, but didn’t make any attempt to demonstrate how well acquainted he and your body have become. His eyes were trained stubbornly on the road ahead, and you got the feeling it was not the time for jokes. For light-heartedness perhaps, but this was a serious moment.  
“I don’t have anything I can think of off the top of my head. Nothing debilitating or hereditary, if that’s what you’re worried about.”  
He shook his head “No, but that’s nice to know-w.”  
“Cronus…you’re not unwell, are you?”  
“Me? Nah. Picture of health, babe.”  
“I have very flat feet.”  
“Flat feet?” he repeated “Show me?”  
He pulled the car over onto a shoulder so you could put a foot in his lap, then inspected the sole of your foot with the eye of an art dealer going over a piece.  
“You kinda do, huh?”  
You managed to dissuade him from a game of ‘this little piggy’ by asking where you were going. He became nervous and quiet again, and picked up the speed. At this time of the night, the roads were empty. However, you were far more concerned that someone would come by and pierce the peaceful bubble you shared with Cronus, rather than where Cronus was taking you. If he wanted to hurt you, or anything. The thought never entered your head properly.  
A few miles after he had asked the question, he gave his answer “I’ve got somethin’ really w-weird. Can’t really show it off in the car…but it’s probably gonna be the weirdest thin’ you ev-ver laid eyes on.”  
“What is it? A second face?”  
He laughed and that diffused the tension somewhat. You and Cronus have been quite…close…actually, intimate is the better word for it, in the past few months. Not every night, the way Kurloz insisted you should be doing the minute he found out you were doing anything at all. And never once has either of you taken all your clothes off. Cronus leaves his jeans on no matter what happens, and hasn’t let you touch him yet. The thought that he is a transgender man, still stuck in that uncomfortable limbo before his operation had crossed your mind in the earlier days, but you have since felt the way that his crotch does indeed tent when you’re in the middle of something. So it must be some kind of body issue? Or perhaps a well-concealed kink to do with power-plays?  
You’ve had no idea, but get the feeling you are about to find out.  
By the time you had figured out where you were going, the first streaks of dawn were already on the horizon.   
“Are you taking me to the beach?”  
“Yeah. That somethin’ you w-wanna do?”  
It took a lot of self-control and effort not to gush “Yes. I would like it very much.”  
“So formal.”  
“That would be fucking rad.”  
“And now-w you sound like Latula.”  
The name jolted you a little bit. A lot of the time, when you are with Cronus alone, you forget there is a world outside. And you prefer it that way.  
And this is where you are now.  
Undressing, on a sheltered stretch of soft sand, shivering a little bit in the cool breeze. The water is calm and flat, and there is no sign of anyone for miles around. To your back is a scraggly growth of trees, full of birds singing the dawn chorus and the odd, plodding animal in the under-growth. Cronus seems to have been here before. The road he turned onto a few miles back was narrow and protected well by a thick grove, but he didn’t have to look for it at all. In fact, the turn was almost automatic.  
But as of yet, there have been no red flags. You can’t imagine Cronus would want to do anything to hurt you, either. He’s just not that kind of person. Once you are down to your boxers, Cronus slings an arm around your shoulder and plants a kiss on your cheek.  
“If this gets too w-weird, just let me know-w.”  
You notice his shirt is gone. The rest of his clothes, too.  
Oh hell yes.  
You mean, oh, good. He feels comfortable around you now. Fucking finally. HELL YES FUCKING FINALLY YOU ARE GOING TO GET ALL OF THE BOOTY.  
Ok, that’s enough of that, because your face has turned red.  
Cronus keeps his back to you until he is waist-deep in the water, then he turns and opens his arms. There have never been any sweeter summons to the water. Not even the sirens of Ancient Greece could have made such a welcoming display.  
You splash into the water, wincing at the cold, and let him gather you to his chest.   
And you notice something very weird.  
“Now, as you may hav-ve just noticed…I have a junkless crotch.”  
You’re dating a Ken Doll?  
You are dating a Ken Doll. You’re in love with a Ken Doll, or something really, really similar, because it’s as smooth as polished wood down there.   
“Huh.” Is all you can manage.  
All you trust yourself to say. A part of you is wondering what on earth it was in his pants all those times before, and the rest of you is cursing whatever cruel trick of genetics left him like this. Doesn’t the universe know that you want a normal sex life, with a normal boyfriend with a normal dick? Why do these things happen to you, specifically?  
“Ok.” you say calmly “I can handle this.”  
Cronus sags against you in relief “Ok. That ain’t ev-ven the weirdest thing. Here.”  
The two of you sink into the water, up to your shoulders. Cronus pulls you into a tight hug. You hug him back, marvelling at how weird the world can be.  
“Feel that?”  
“Feel what?”  
“Move your hands around my back.”  
Obediently you rub his back. As your fingers cross his spine, they are gently grazed by something that seems to be emerging from his back. Gasping, you watch as sharp, purple spines, like fingernails, inch out of his back. Their progress is somehow very tentative and delicate, like an animal creeping from its burrow. As the light hits them, the spines glisten in the weak morning sun. The effect on you would be the same if you had been hit in the chest.  
“Fins?” you ask.  
“Fins.” he confirms “Used to have a tail, too.”  
Cronus cups your face and stares into your eyes for a long moment. Searching for repulsion or fear. When he finds none of that, he relaxes just a little more. He takes your hand and places it very, very gently on his neck.  
“Don’t scratch me, ok?”  
“I won’t.”  
Beneath your fingers, a row of warm, wet slits open up and taste the air. They suck at your fingers, kind of like water draining around your fingers. Your breath catches in your throat. When Cronus moves your hand away, he is scared again.  
“Gills?”  
“Uh-huh.”  
“Ok.”  
“Ok? What does that mean?”   
He is so nervous you can’t help but kiss him, desperate to soothe his fears “It means it’s odd, but that’s it.”  
“What…what does that mean?”  
“I love you. I don’t…I don’t know what you have going on for you, with these fins and gills and a junkless crotch, but I don’t think it’s really going to change the way I feel about you in the grand scheme of things.”  
He is quiet after that. There is nothing but the sound of the gentle surf, the seagulls overhead, and the songbirds dotting the ragged tree-line.  
Cronus smiles “I don’t know w-why I w-was ev-ven worried about this. Of course you don’t fuckin’ care, do you? I love you too.”  
You’re about to kiss him, but an odd, groping pressure between your legs stops you “I thought you said you didn’t have a tail?”  
“Not anymore.”  
“Then what’s that between my legs?”  
His smile turns filthy in an instant “Just ‘cos it ain’t on the outside don’t mean it ain’t there.”  
You can’t help but return the smile “Oh, yes? I’ll be interested to find out for myself.”  
All of the booty, you think.  
Hell yes.

Kankri Vantas: still blind and choking? ============>

Yes, but the concern is touching.  
And the black is lifting away. The thick, suffocating pressure on your lungs is going as well. Light is pouring back into your eyes, searing and blinding them, making you cringe away from the hands around you.  
“Don’t do that,” snaps a voice, inside your head “I’m tryin’ ta help, ya dumb fuckin’ guppy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And again with the furtive gay sex. I should keep a tally of how many times this happens.


	19. The first floater of many, and no, not the kind the toilet plunger works on

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (#welcomerefugees )  
> (now, Tony Abbot, get off your fat racist ass and do something in Australia)

Porrim Maryam: so what’s up with you? ==========>

Your name is Porrim Maryam, and traffic in the apocalypse is surprisingly easy to cut through.  
At first, you were worried. Hordes of disposed and grief-crazed people would be everywhere, right? Or perhaps the roads would be destroyed by the explosions that would have surely resulted from the chaos of hundreds of thousands of people across the country all attempting to get inside at once. At the very least, there were going to be some roving bands of scum taking advantage of their towns being locked-down and trapped inside out of fear.  
Your girlfriend had the idea of staying away from the cities entirely, which was a good one. Most of her ideas are very good. Used to be that you poked fun at your woman for stockpiling on essentials. She does this in cycles- Damara is by no means a full-blown prepper, but she will get these premonitions every six months or so that drive her to stack up cans of gasoline in the garage, or buy up a lot in this one product of food. When this happens, gas prices are usually about to go up, or the item is pulled from the shelves. You can deal with her weirdness, her touch of the ethereal. Sometimes it can be unnerving or irritating, but it is just who Damara is and what she does with who she is, and how can you not love that?  
A few days before the rain started to fall, Damara grew anxious. On the night before the rain began, she sat up in bed. You were staying up later than her, absorbed in one of the first good books you had read in a long time. Suddenly, Damara bolted upright. The confused, groggy look on her face told you she had no idea that she was awake.  
“S’gonna be big.” she muttered “Lots of trouble.”  
Then she lay her head on your stomach and dropped off, as if nothing had happened. You brushed it off. With Damara, you have to brush off weird stuff a lot of the time.  
Of course, she was right.  
The world has not dissolved into the chaos and violence that you thought it would. In fact, in every town you have passed through, the local police or some kind of ad –hoc militia formed by the town council has been in charge. There are road-blocks in place, but only because the people in the towns want to be sure they don’t miss anyone with valuable information about the world outside. And then there is the fear of an influx of refugees from the cities. Apparently, those are in ruins. That is at least the gist of the information you have gathered from the various small towns you have passed through on the way to your own.  
You and Damara are making good time home. There are only about ten more miles until your town will drift into sight on the horizon.  
It is her turn to drive, which is a good thing. Even though there weren’t dead people littering the street the way you feared (and now that you think about it, it would make more sense to picture them cluttering up the sewer in puddles), your stomach is still turning. You are ill. You are terrified. You are faced with something you had hoped you would never have to deal with again, and you have no idea how to process it.  
“I need to get back down there.”  
Damara bites her bottom lip “You can’t just scry them?”  
“I…I can’t, no. I need to be there in person. I need to make sure they’re ok. You know what this kind of rain means, right?”  
She reaches across the stick-shift to squeeze your hand “I know.”  
“And I know what it will look like if you go home alone. I know they’ll all think I’m dead and you’ve gone a little crazy with grief-”  
She laughs “Those hicks already think I’m a crazy slut. So long as no one accuses me of murdering you and dumping your body, I don’t care what they say.”  
“I…can you pull over?”  
A complex mix of emotions flash across Damara’s face, almost too quickly to read. It is only because the two of you have been together for so long that you know what she feels right now. She’s afraid to let you go, under that mask of a smile. She has no idea what your world looks like. The only things she knows for certain about the world you have come from is that it is extremely dangerous, especially for people like you.  
She knows why you left too, which must scare her more than anything.  
But even so, she pulls the car over onto the next shoulder. Damara hops out of the car. The wind picks her sundress up and the sun glares through it. For a moment, you can see her whole body silhouetted through the thin fabric. It makes you wonder- what are you doing, trying to leave this beautiful woman? If you can hold on for twenty minutes more, you will be home. With Kankri and Aradia and the others. From there, you and Cronus can put your heads together and come up with some kind of strategy. Something wildly more productive and intelligent than what you’re about to do.  
Damara opens the door for you.  
Kicking off your shoes, you leave them on the bottom of the car. The tarmac is rough at your feet. The two of you walk hand-in-hand into the dunes. There is no trail, so Damara gets in front of you and blazes a trial through the scratching grass and the spiny plants. Husks of seeds rasp along your bare upper-arms. With your free hand, you reach underneath your dress and release the clasp of your bra. The sand is smooth and empty of life, except for a few seagulls hanging in the air above the surf.  
“Could you unzip me? I don’t want to ruin this dress.”  
Damara unzips the back of your dress. Before you can take it off, she slips her hands around your waist and presses her cheek to the back of your neck.  
You stand like that for a long time, letting yourself be afraid and hesitant while you have the time for it.  
“When you find them…” her voice is slightly thick with the weight of unspilt tears “Tell them I said hi.”  
“I’m coming back.”  
“I know.”  
“Damara, I mean it. I won’t leave you.”  
“I know.”  
She begins to peel off the dress. In a moment, her arms are full of your clothes. She has everything, down to the tie that was in your hair.  
Your skin erupts in rashes of goose-pimples. Not from the slight nip in the air of the early morning. The sight of the water. Green and blue and beautiful and completely menacing. You step into the water and shiver. Again, not from the cold.  
Glancing over your shoulder, you say “I love you.”  
“I love you.”  
You manage to wade in up to your waist before you can no longer resist the urge to look back. Damara’s arms are folded tightly, and her smile is wan. But it is there. She waves. You wave back. Then you plunge your head underneath the water, as your legs begin to fuse together into one for the first time in years and years.

 

Karkat Vantas: help out ==========>

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you feel like you’re living in a fucking movie right now.  
You’re not sure what kind of director would pick up this particular project, where the townsfolk all band together without a single problem in the apocalypse as oppose to tearing each other to pieces over old grudges and the like, but there is definitely a whimsical touch of ‘what the fuck’ happening right here, right now. Something dreamy and hazy has fallen on the town. People are tired and confused, even as they move with a sense of purpose. There are tasks to be done.  
The first day was apparently all about finding out who was dead. You can’t vouch that, seeing as you spent most of the first day tangled up in Gamzee’s arms and wilfully ignoring the rest of the world, as if letting it in was going to mean you would be wrenched away from him again.  
The first night saw the return of several of the fortunate souls who had gotten their asses out of the dead-end town after high-school. Sons and daughters of the people who still lived here. Those close enough to make it back without much trouble, or for the sheer lack of distance to cover. Among them was Rus Zahhak. Apparently, he knocked on Graa’ant Makara’s door in the middle of the night after he found his own house empty, fully prepared to hear that what remained of his family were dead. They turned out to be sleeping somewhere else that night: Equius was with Nepeta and Lee Zahhak, who’s even scarier than you remember him being, was still awake and working with some of the other townspeople of note to see what they could do about getting the phones back.  
Since he has come back, Latula Pyrope and Damara Megido have joined him. It doesn’t bode well for you that Damara rocked up to the town minus her girlfriend (you thought they would be married by now), but you haven’t had the time to talk to her about it.  
You’re trying not to talk to people, for the most part. Your old friends are making it easy. They don’t approach you. When they spot you coming down the street, they cross the street without a second glance. When they end up next to you in a crowd, they’re quick to wriggle away. They’re all pleased as punch to talk to Gamzee, of course. You kind of hoped they might do that flighty, obnoxious thing where someone is used like a post office to pass on messages, between bitter, fighting friends, but they’re above that.  
You’re not above that. You are so totally fucking tempted to make Gamzee tell Equius and Nepeta that they must have forgotten their shared brain at home, because fuck, do they look fucking stupid today. Something like that. It doesn’t have to be clever or poignant or true. You just want some attention. You want to hear it’s ok that you disappeared on them, though obviously, from their reaction, it’s really not.  
You have had plenty of time to think on your transgressions. All of those sins. A library of sins, against your friends and against…well, just your friends. The quiet grunt-work means your head has been mostly emptied of the trouble of talking to other people. Like always, when you’re toiling away at a bit of back-breaking labour, you’re pretty much working out the fucking meaning of life over here. You and Gamzee are just moving some stuff right now. Boxes of electronics out of the front of the store, to the back of the storage room. The owner of the store enlisted the two of you to help, saying that it would be a lot easier to prevent looters from getting at his stuff if he had it all locked up.  
You wanted to point out the utter redundancy of doing this and ask him who the hell he thought wanted to loot him: Grandma Maheswaran or little Timmy? But Gamzee must have smelled the snark- he was good at predicting your idiocy and narrowly preventing it, back when you were kids- and shot you a warning glance that shut you up. Most of the shop-keepers have been in town for a long time, so they all know you. They know what drove your father out of the town, and why he had to move so fast. They’re not quite sure of what to make of your return yet and just about the last thing you should do is earn some bad will for you and your father with some shitty behaviour.  
“Hey Gamzee?”  
He looks up from a box of remotes “’Sup, bro?”  
“I…is it ok if I just sorta sneak off, for a little bit?”  
“Gotta clear yer head?”  
You nod “Tell Mr Rosenbaum I got called away by my dad or something.”  
Gamzee waves you away with a weak smile.  
You move quickly through the town, ducking all attempts to engage you or get your help with one of the many tasks. The townspeople buzz all over the place. Honestly, it beggars belief, how these people have just taken to their situation and accepted it and are now doing their best to make it turn out alright. The people you’re used to hanging around with are all kind of narrow-minded, bitter people. Towns like this little place, full of old friends and family who are also prepared to act like it, these kinds of places are rare.  
Without really thinking about it, you realise your legs have carried you to the beach.  
The fucking beach. You don’t want to be here, so soon after the rain. You’ve seen what water can really do if it wants to now. The only thing that could possibly be worse than knowing that in the town, beneath your feet, the sludge is spiked with melted people, is maybe seeing a tsunami at this point. Getting caught in one. Blasted off your feet and churned head-over-heels in a mass of water and debris and other people, only to get washed out to sea or into a ruin where you’ll have to survive for days on your own without help or clean water.  
You close your eyes. The sea breeze is faint and pleasant on your face, blowing salt and spray with it. You cast your mind to the other side of the world. This was a world-wide event, right? What about the people who live in deserts, where Mother Nature has gotten her knickers in a twist and refused to rain for years, and suddenly this deluge comes down? They must have danced in the rain, until they realised what it was. What about the people who had no shelter? Everyone from children in the slums of New Delhi to the elderly homeless in Washington DC- they would have had to run for cover and watch people they knew died. Watching a person you don’t know die is almost as bad, you have found, because you start to imagine what kind of life they must lead.  
For a while, you just walk.  
One end of the shore is dominated by the town’s docks and the odd beach-house. The other end of the shore just stretches on and on into coast. If you squint, you can almost see Kankri and Cronus’s house in the distance, sheltered by a headland and a few wind-swept trees. Sollux apparently went to that house last night and hasn’t come back since.  
What could he be doing over there?  
“Maybe Eridan came back.” you mutter, then laugh at yourself for remembering that damned stupid part of your childhood  
That was a dream, what you saw that summer. It was the last summer you were to spend in the town. If you had known this, you would have worried less about Sol carrying himself off to the beach every day to play with his imaginary mermaid friend, and spent more time worrying about Gamzee. Now that you’re back, you can see whatever about him was fucked-up before has only become more fucked-up as the years ground by.  
Could you have helped him, if you just talked to each other a little bit more that last summer? Maybe. Ultimately, you would have just left him with some positive-thinking bullshit to cling to.  
You kick out at a shell in anger, thinking about how you wasted that last summer all the same. Sol was so wrapped up in a fantasy world while his mother wasted away, then died, and left him in the hands of a brother so damaged he could walk straight and a father so cold, you’re not going to be worried about global warming as long as this guy’s fucking heart of ice is around and beating.  
Eridan was an imaginary friend that Sol conjured up to keep him company while his world grew colder and crueller. From what you could tell of the little stories Sol would tell you about him, Eridan wasn’t really that nice of a person either.  
He was mean and talked shit and, now that you think about it with the wisdom of a high-schooler, was probably just an extension of Sol’s all-round disillusioned asshole out-look on life. You remember one day when you followed him down to the beach, and few after that, but not much about the days. Except for a sunburn. Lots of sunburns and sand everywhere, which must mean you and Sol were playing hard every day.  
You kick at the sand again. This time, you send a shell sailing over a slight slope in the sand. You hear it strike something soft on the other side of the slope. Confused, you climb it quickly.  
When you see what the shell has hit, your legs turn to water. Your knees crack together and you fall to the floor, choking on a scream.  
First, you make out a hand. A hand groping into the sand as if for a weapon or a life-preserver, flung behind the body. Then, a torso that has been torn open at the ribs so the insides glisten in the sunlight. The blood, the tissues, they’re all as blue as ink, or the sky on a good day. The face is mostly destroyed. One eye-socket has been broken open, and you see a crab picking its way through her brains using the shattered nose as a purchase. Rough, black hair is strewn all over the wreck of her face and fanning out behind her in the sand, crusted with salt and braided with sand. Her bottom half has almost been shorn completely off, up to about where her hips would be. There, scales replace the flesh. Smooth, glossy scales that are perfectly flush, perfectly natural with her greyish skin.  
A trail of gore and organs lies beneath her in the damp sand, so she must have been washed up here at some point during the high-tide and then rotted or died while the water receded into a low tide.  
Finally, you manage to scream.  
You run back to the town like all of hell is hot at your heels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of questions are going to be answered in the next chapter, since it's the 20th. Consider the next chapter something like a sort of treasure trove of answers. Lots of tension's about to be solved, and replaced with other equally terrible stuff. We get to know what the heck happened to Lezlee. We get to know who the heck Porrim is (because this town is home to so many secrets and weird people I might as well call it Gravity Falls). We get to see Dave and the other mers.  
> We also may even see that elusive, sweater-ed phantom that torments Cronus's dreams. Or will. He's been gone for like 3 days, ok, just chill Cro.


	20. The full cast assembles, with some minor pieces missing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so Porrim didn't quite make it into this chapter. She'll be appearing in the next one, though.

Lezlee Vantas: discuss impending apocalypse as logically as possible with mermaid prince and best friends ===============>

Your name is Lezlee Vantas.  
Starting from your right, their names are Graa’ant Makara, Lee Zahhak, Meulin Leijon, Hana Megido and Psiimon Captor, and also, the Heir to the Throne of the Depths (that’s what he calls it anyway), Dualscar Ampora. They are your best friends and part of the only barrier between the world and certain, rampant chaos. The last one is a mermaid who once saved your life then pursued a friendship for a few years, ultimately culminating after you slept with him and he had to leave to save the ocean or something. You’re only just getting the full story now, and you can’t say it inspires much sympathy in you.  
Apparently, the reason he had to leave so abruptly is because he was needed back in his city. Something had gone terribly wrong with these thing he calls ‘dream bubbles’, which his kind uses to create small pockets between dimensions to hold the kinds of things you would put in your wallet. You understand this is a perfectly reasonable excuse to leave you, still aching from the loss of your virginity in a cooling bed, but you also want to punch him in the face.  
It’s a good thing you’re not doing much talking right now.  
You and your friends are sprawled out on the sands of the beach, in a cove that is sufficiently sheltered from the surf so that Cary isn’t jostled by every wave that breaks while he sits in the water. His tail half is stuck in the water, while he leans on his arms on the damp sand. The rest of you sit in a lose circle around him, all somewhat soaked from the spray and the odd, powerful wave that sweeps underneath you.  
Cary is doing his best to explain the politics of an underwater world to people who have never been further from their own, earthy surface than a few hundred feet into this very water.  
“…so the Heiress is traditionally the only one w-with a legitimised claim ta the throne, yeah?”  
They all nod.  
“’cept, she ain’t a queen only no more. She’s a tyrant, now-w, an’ w-we gotta get rid ‘a her ‘fore she causes some real damage.”  
“So what is it that you want us to do?” asks Hana.  
She isn’t thrown at all to be talking to a mermaid. Lucky for you, your friends are quite receptive, open-minded people. It probably comes from being a collection of just about the only brown and Asian kids in this mostly-white little hick town. Thanks to small, rural minds and morals you’ve all kind of had to band together to help each other out and keep each other sane. Maybe the environment will change as you get older and the opinions around here mature, but for now, if it were up to you you wouldn’t raise your kids here, if they happen to inherit your skin colour.  
“I w-want y’all ta help me.”  
“Yes, we got that part,” says Lee impatiently “How are we specifically to help you- ow, careful Meulin.”  
“Sorry,” she smiles, busy pulling his hair back into a braid that actually looks good on him “You had a knot there, in your perfect mane.”  
Cary gives them a look that suggests he has never seen anything weirder “The W-witch is after me, like I said. This time, she’s made it so that if I ev-ver go up on land again I ain’t gonna be able to come back in the w-water. Not complete as a mer, again, an’ I can’t give that up. It ain’t right fer somebody made fer the w-water to be up on the land…the first time I came up here, I had no choice. It w-was either that or die,” his eyes land on you for a brief moment then they fall again, to where he is drawing in the sand with his forefinger “An’ then I got the all-clear to go back.”  
“Why is that you need our help anyway?” presses Hana “What’s so special about us? Is it that we’re just here and we know what’s going on? I want to know if there’s some other sinister motive. I don’t take kindly to being tricked and dragged around. I get enough of that from Doc Scratch.”  
Cary looks at her quizzically.  
Meulin leans over and whispers conspicuously “She doesn’t like calling her dad ‘Dad’.”  
“Oh. I get that. My mom’s a fuckin’ prick as w-well.”  
“How is Eridan these days?” you ask, in spite of your determination to give him the cold shoulder.  
Cary shrugs “She’s been dead for like, a year in yer time.”  
You feel a hot flush creeping up your neck, though you’re not sure if it is from fear or embarrassment for having stumbled into that “Oh. I’m so sorry.”  
“I’m not. She died doin’ w-what she’s best at. Fightin’ fer her kingdom an’ her people.”  
There is a moment of thick silence.   
Then, bless his heart, Psiimon speaks up “My dad blew himself up.”  
Everyone looks at him. You and your friends in shock, because Psiimon never talks about his father. Cary in a slight surprise, because he wasn’t expecting sympathy from this guy in particular.  
Psiimon continues, somewhat self-conscious “You don’t have to worry about just…just telling us what it is you need from us. I don’t think we’re gonna turn you down, even if you want us to help you fight a war or something. We’re weird people. We do weird things. We’re all used to be on the outside, looking in so…so…uh…”  
“Just spill it.” you finish.  
Cary doesn’t look at you when he speaks “Lez, ‘member how w-we met?”  
“You never forget your first near-death experience.”  
Your friends exchange confused looks and begin to mutter amongst themselves.  
Graa’ant pinches Lee’s leg to get him to shut up and mouths ‘tell y’all later’.  
“You remember the woman chasin’ ya?”  
The memory of the night is never far from your mind. Even in the last three years, where Cary has been little more than a phantom that sometimes slips into your dreams to remind you of why you should be so desperately unhappy, you still think about it. There is really no way to forget the way the light glanced off that knife, or the way the smell of death crept into your mouth and nose and made you taste blood and viscera. That’s going to stick with you for the rest of your life, however short that may turn out to be with Cary here again.  
“Yes. I didn’t see her face or anything.”  
Graa’ant slings an arm around your shoulders and pats you on the back. You scoot a little closer to him.  
“There’s a reason I w-was up there the same time she w-was up there. How-w much do ya know-w about yer father?”  
You don’t like where this is going “I know he’s dead. He died a long time ago.”  
“That’s not exactly true. An’ w-what do ya know-w about yer mom?”  
“She’s…just tell me what the big fucking secret is, Cary, I’m not interested in playing this game.”  
“W-well, I can tell ya now-w, you ain’t Arabic or nothin’. Yer from the same part ‘a the w-world as me. I only didn’t tell ya ‘cause it ain’t my business. I got a whole lot of respect fer that lady that yer liv-vin’ with. She did some good stuff for our world. Ya can ask her about it. If she don’t w-want ya to know-w…w-well I’m already wreckin’ a lotta her hard w-work keepin’ this a secret.”  
“What the hell are you trying to tell me?” you snap “I’m a mer, like you?”  
Cary nods “Yer in hidin’. Ya ain’t touched the w-water like one of us before. That w-woman that was after you on the beach? She’s a friend of mine, actually. Her name’s Spinerette. I call her Nettie, ‘a course-”  
“So you’re telling me the woman that almost killed me is your girlfriend?”  
“No! W-where the hell did you get that from-”  
“Ease off guys.” interjects Graa’ant.  
“Yeah, chill out. The fate of the world is apparently at stake.” adds Meulin “There, Lee, your braid is beautiful.”  
Cary takes a deep breath, squaring his shoulders “Long story short, that w-woman w-wasn’t a w-woman yet, w-when she went after ya. She w-was my age. Nettie’s alw-ways been big. She was killin’ that other w-woman, though, a lady w-we called Ms Paint, ‘cos she w-was after yer mom. I don’t think she knew-w ya w-were Rosa’s blood, otherw-wise she nev-ver would’a touched you. She just thought you w-were some ordinary human gettin’ ready ta make life hard for her.”  
“If she was a mer too, why didn’t she come in the water after me?”  
“I scared her off, didn’t I? I had no idea w-who you w-were then, but I didn’t see the point in killin’ ya. W-we w-were about to leave. I thought w-we w-were nev-ver comin’ back, an’…an’ she nev-ver did, did she? Ya w-weren’t gonna cause us no trouble. I just w-wanted to get her back. I w-was playin’ look-out for Nettie. She had the biggest crush on Rosa I’v-ve ev-ver seen, so w-when she heard the rumours that this one mer knew-w w-where she w-was, she follow-wed the poor bitch an’ chased her up on land w-with a spell an’ and killed her.”  
Your head has begun to swim. There are too many things to process, and you have no idea where to begin or what to think. What’s he trying to tell you? That your mother is a mythical hero in one world? You can’t accept that. She’s just your mother, isn’t she? Just a nice old Arabic lady who picked the wrong place to raise her brown-skinned son. She’s not heroic or impressive or anything. She’s just an old woman, right?  
You don’t know how to express this to Cary. What he’s claiming is the most ludicrous thing you’ve ever heard.  
“So…so if Lezlee’s some kind of mermaid, what does that make him, exactly?” asks Psiimon haltingly “I don’t get what you’re trying to tell us.”  
Cary knits his brow “I just need your guys’ help. It doesn’t matter that much that Lezlee’s a mer. I just thought he should know-w he is, through an’ through. W-what I need from you people is just help. In a few-w days, the Sea Witch will be rockin’ up in this here harbour. She’s gonna be huntin’ on her ow-wn, w-with the rest of her army busy fightin’ mine. That’s our adv-vantage. All w-we gotta do is trap the bitch on land in a spell, then I’ll spin up a bubble an’ stick her in there. I’m just gonna need yer help gettin’ her up on land.”  
“I don’t have to believe you.” you say suddenly.  
All eyes turn to you.  
Your hands are shaking slightly with repressed anger, frustration, and the nerves, just the sheer adrenaline shock of seeing this man again. You were sure he was gone from your life forever and now he comes back, with this ridiculous story of underwater civil wars and your secretly magical blood lineage.  
He has the nerve to come back, to drag your friends into this as well, and to feed you all this shit?  
You’re not going to take this.  
“I don’t know what you’ve been doing in the last three years. You could be the terrorist now and we’d never know, right? Because all we have is your testimony. You don’t have any way to prove my mom’s a mer unless you want me to drag her down to the beach and have her tell us all about her exploits as a famous mer hero. That’s not gonna happen. All I know is that you leave suddenly, stay away for three years, and come back looking like you were used as a shark’s chew toy. Maybe you’re a pathological liar. Maybe you just want a captive audience. Maybe this is all one big fucking story that’s going to go away the moment you leave today, right? Because that’s what happened last time. First it was all about how your mom pisses you off and your royal duties piss you off and how you hate going around with Broderick on your tail all the time, then suddenly that just changes. You just leave without a goodbye and I’m left here wondering if I’ve been fucking crazy for years.”  
Cary doesn’t respond. Instead, he puts his thumb in his mouth and bites down, spilling beads of purple blood. His eyes seem wet- maybe it’s a trick of the light? He leans forward and reaches out to you. You don’t pull away, but you do tense under his touch. While your friends watch anxiously, he smears the blood on either side of your neck.  
The moment he has moved his hand, it is like your neck has split open. Like stripping off gloves at the end of a long day to allow your hands to breathe again, except your neck is open and it doesn’t hurt at all. You inhale. What feels like delicate, slit-shaped mouths in the side of your neck do the same. Gently, you touch the wet sides of your neck. Your fingers graze a moist tissue that shrinks away at your touch. The sensation is the one you get when you scratch at a scab, touching bare flesh and tissue, except without the pain.  
“Holy shit.” says Graa’ant, which seems to sum up the general opinion of the rest of your friends.  
“I don’t care if you believ-ve me or not,” says Cary, surreptitiously wiping his eyes “I just need your help.”

 

Dave Strider: throw up ==============>

Nope. Not gonna do it. Not in front of John.  
One of you has to keep your pan screwed the right way on, and going by the harsh green tinge creeping into John’s face, it’s not gonna be him. The smell of Vriska’s blood has been heavy in the water for miles. Against your better judgement and basic instincts, you hoped and hoped and prayed that she was still alive.  
When the scent trail turned into small ribbons of blood, you began to lose that hope. When the ribbons changed into long, twisting ropes as you neared the surf, you basically gave up on hoping and switched over to good old prayer. Haven’t prayed since your Bro got sick, a while back, around the time the Condesce brought Eridan home. You remember so clearly the helplessness, the doom you could feel yourself facing, as well as the rest of the kingdom. Your Bro is an important mer. Always has been. Losing him would mean being orphaned, to you. Losing him would mean losing the Condesce’s right-hand mer. All you could do is pray and wait for a miracle. You got one.  
It’s not gonna happen again, that’s for sure. You have officially used up your quota of miracles for your life-time.  
Sure enough, by the time you and John are close enough to surface with a clear view of the surface, she’s dead. Covered in crabs. The sand that covers her tells you she’s been here for at least the whole night. Mers don’t rot that quickly- the salt in your pores stops that from happening. Vriska has not yet begun to rot. She seems almost fresh, in fact, and is still bleeding. That means she died recently, although she has been there for a long time.  
“She bled out. Like, five minutes ago.” says John, his voice thick “Oh Gog, Dave, look. Her tail is gone.”  
Vriska’s body has been hewn in half. The ragged cut of the flesh tells you she was killed by a shark, probably being controlled by one of the Sea Witch’s agents.  
“John, we need to get out of here.”  
His eyes go wild with fright “We can’t leave her there!”  
Your eyes have begun to water “I know! I don’t want to leave her there, but she only just died! That means the fucker that killed her is still close enough to smell us. We need to go now. John, you’re bleeding. I’m bleeding. We’re both leaving nice, clean scent trails for this fucker to follow us and we need to get back to safety now, or we will die out here.”  
The two of you came out here with minimal weapons, to avoid attracting attention. You weren’t supposed to be away. Your Bro told you and John to stay close to the camp that had been set up, where those that had survived the burning of the bubbles and the Witch’s subsequent attack on the survivors. There were not many. And those that had survived were only those too strong to be killed.  
Bro really needs your help.  
The Condesce’s last remaining Prince has gone missing, and neither has his fiancée been seen for a long time. Hundreds of thousands of people are missing and Vriska is just one. She may have priority, for being the daughter of Mindfang, but you should not have gone looking for her.  
John just happened to pick up her scent in the water and there was nothing you could do to get him off the hoof-beast he wanted to charge in on, so you had to follow him to keep him safe. He still bled from many wounds that persisted in spurting behind his bandages, from the escape from the city. You were in a better way, since you were further from the centre of the city, looking for the royal pains-in-your-ass, Fef and Eri, who had sneaked out again to gallivant somewhere in the kelp forests. Neither of you are in the condition to stage a rescue. Or in this case, to haul a dead body back to the camp.  
John grabs you by the shoulders and fixes you with this unhinged stare “Dave. I’m not gonna leave her here. Think about it…if they find the evidence of her body, the land-pounders, what are they gonna do? She may be missing her tail, but she’s still grey and horned!”  
“John…”  
Oh Gog, he’s not going to leave, is he?  
You pull him into a tight hug “I’m so sorry, man. I know you guys…”  
He flinches against you, his tail twitching “Don’t. We weren’t. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me go, I’m not leaving her!”  
He will want to bury her. Not where her body can be retrieved and paraded again by the Sea Witch’s agents, either. He’ll want to drag her body all the way back to the camp and bury her there, and that’s gonna mean carting a big, dead, blood-weeping body back with you when time is of the essence.  
John is already hurt. You may be able to move fast with the weight on you, but he won’t be moving fast at all. He’ll need your help just to get away with his life.  
Finally, you part.   
You’ll try one more time “We need to go, John.”  
He shakes his head stubbornly “I’m not leaving her.”  
“Then I’m sorry about this.”  
John is already hovering on the brink of unconsciousness from exhaustion and blood-loss, so it only takes one, comparably light punch to take him down. He splashes back into the surf, sinking beneath the water. You wrap an arm around his waist and with one last, wistful glance at Vriska, you dive back into the waves.  
The taste of her blood mixes in the water with the bitter tang of the magic that was cast a few days ago, and with the salt of John’s blood.   
At this rate, you may not make it back alive. That’s fine. As long as you can get close enough so that your chewed bodies will be found by your family.

 

Karkat Vantas: why did you turn your back on the fucking body?: ===============>

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you are feeling like possibly the stupidest shit in the world at the moment.  
You stand on the top of the sand, staring slack-jawed at the sand. Not a trace of the body remains. Not so much as a drop of blue blood, or a single strand of black hair to give evidence to your story.  
“Ah, I see. The corpse you mean to show me is invisible.” says Equius curtly “Well, I think I have seen all I can bear. I’m going back. Feel free to stay out here and entertain your twisted fantasies for as long as you like.”  
“What the fuck?”  
Equius starts to go. Automatically, you grab him by the arm and drag him back. Holy shit, is he a column of muscle and cords now. Way the fuck bigger than he ever was when you were both rugrats. And he didn’t like being touched. Equius wrenches his arm out of your grasp easily, looking like he’s about to knock you down. You throw an arm up to protect your face, and this makes his face soften. He steps back a little bit.  
“I wasn’t going to hit you.”  
“Fuck that. I don’t care if you punch me in the nose, with your giant bear-man paws. Just…fucking…look! There was something here! There was a dead body being eaten by crabs!”  
He is not impressed “Well in that case, maybe the crabs were replaced by busy little beavers and finished off the body, down to the last modicum of bone and gristle before you could get here. Just to spite you, you know?”  
You glower at him “Why the hell did I think you were gonna be useful?”  
When you ran back to the docks, your chest on fire, you ran past four people who had looked up in concern at your approach to get to Equius. He looked up from the engine of the boat he was working on just in time to catch you- you had run to him so fast you couldn’t stop in time, and would have sort of belly-flopped on him if he hadn’t caught you. You couldn’t get much out at first. Just something about a dead body, which was enough to get him up. The rest of the assholes milling around the dock must have assumed the two of you were sprinting off into the dunes to explore each other’s’ bodies or something, because no one made a move to follow you. Once your head began to clear and the incredulity of what you had seen set in, all you could do is scream about it at the top of your lungs.  
Frankly, you’re surprised Equius came this far at all.  
“Karkat, look. There is no blood. There is no trace of a body. I cannot rely on your testimony alone-”  
“Why?” you snap, clutching at your stinging lungs “Why the fuck won’t you believe me?”  
He cocks an eyebrow “A half-eaten body that leaked blue blood? How can I bring myself to believe that?”  
“Yeah? Well fuck you. I know what I saw.”  
“Are you sure you do?” something in his face grows almost diabolical, and he takes a small step forward that reminds you of the way a lion circles its prey “These last few days have been an incredible stressor on all of us. I don’t know how many people you saw dying, but I saw more than I can count.”  
You inch backwards, trying not to touch the sand where the body lay “I saw whole streets of melted people when we were driving. I- I saw a man try to run across a street with an umbrella and the rain just ate his legs up. You and me- we’ve both seen some shit. It’s not a fucking competition.”  
“No, but it is ample reason to develop PTSD.”  
“I’m not losing it!” you shout like a crazy man “There was a body out here!”  
Equius narrows his eyes at you, then turns on his heel and splashes into the water, up to his knees “There’s nothing here either, Karkat. The body didn’t wash away. The body didn’t get up and walk off. The body didn’t do a thing because there was no body.”  
You’re too frustrated to respond to him. Instead, you turn to the sand and lean as close as you dare, crouching where you think the body was, but not on top of the sand where it lay. Even the sand here is not disturbed with the contours that would show a body had been lying here. It is smooth and undisturbed, just like the rest of the beach.  
How could it be gone?  
Loathe as you are to admit it, maybe Equius is right. You know what you saw, but who knows if what you know is actually true? The way things have panned out, with the people you spent years missing ignoring you the way you ignored them….it’s your comeuppance, sure, but it might be affecting you more badly than you’re allowing yourself to feel.  
“I know you think I don’t know what I’m doing, but I do.” you mutter.  
Equius sighs, facing out to sea with his arms folded tightly “No you don’t. You haven’t the slightest inkling what it was like for us after you left. Do you know what it did to Gamzee? I don’t suppose he told you, but he spiralled after you left.”  
You swallow hard, but you can’t stop yourself before you’re defending yourself “That’s not all on me.”  
“No, it’s not. But I am certain his decline would have been far less steep if you had at least answered one of his emails.”  
A tight, hot feeling constricts your chest. To your horror, a single tear drops into the sand. Quickly, you wipe your eyes “I didn’t know what to say. I was…you know what? Fuck it. I don’t have to explain myself to you. Gamzee and me, we’re fine.”  
“Are you certain? You know he doesn’t complain when he’s in pain. He wouldn’t ask for a glass of water if he were on fire.”  
“Then it’s a damned good thing he’s not. Jesus, it’s not like he killed somebody while I was gone…is it?”  
“No, he hasn’t killed anyone.”  
“Is he gonna try to kill anyone?”  
“I believe you are missing the point.”  
You’re kind of too tired to really duke it out with Equius, so you go quiet, waiting for him to read you the riot act. For some reason, he doesn’t fill the air with cold and calculated jibes. He just stands there, staring at the water.  
“What?”  
Equius backs slowly out of the water. You notice that the water dripping from his bare ankles and calves is an unnatural, harsh blue. The blue of the blood that you saw. Standing up so fast you get a head-rush, you hobble over to Equius and peer into the water, searching for the corpse.  
In the shallows of the water, the foam has been dyed blue. A sleek, strangely streamlined shape is rolled over and over in the waves. Every now and then, something pokes up out of the water, the tip of a fin. It is a tail with flukes, stopping abruptly where the torso should have begun.  
Bloodless, Equius turns to you “Go get your father. My father. Please, just somebody older and smarter to explain this to us.”

Kankri Vantas : ask of Her Royal Highness where the hell you are and what she’s going to do with you ==============>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP Vriska  
> May she serve Tavros's army of ghosts well in the afterlife


	21. The Sea Witch's plans, as told by Jr

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short note apologising for the lack of creative fish puns. I had a master-list of puns lying around somewhere, but my dog ate it. Textbook excuse, I know. On the bright side I'm sure my dog enjoyed the snack, because she was grinning when I found her standing over the list and this big honking essay I had just finished, so comfort yourselves with the knowledge that somebody had a chance to enjoy the puns.

Kankri Vantas: ask of Her Royal Highness where the hell you are and what she’s going to do with you ============>

It has taken close to two days for your to remember what your name is, which was the initial piece of information that you were groping for the most frantically. The idea of losing yourself entailed losing several other people, most of whom share your name. Cronus and Karkat Vantas- your husband and brother, respectively. So, the retrieval of your name was what you deemed most important.  
Figuring out if the gills in the side of your neck and the tail were always there took the back-seat.  
So when the young woman finally removes the guard from your eyes and the bindings from your arms, you are able to confidently respond to her question.  
“What’s yer name?” she asks.  
Her language is chirping, rasping and gurgles much more than any language you have ever spoken before. And yet somehow, it sets off a little spark of recognition at the back of your brain. Before you know it, you are responding fluently.  
“Kankri Vantas.”  
She blinks “Ya sure it ain’t Maryam?”  
“It’s not Maryam.”  
You feel as though the name belongs to someone familiar, though. Someone who has been in your life for a long time. The connotation is kind of warm and fuzzy, though you have no idea why.  
“I’m definitely a Vantas,” you insist, taking care to maintain eye-contact to show her you are being perfectly honest “But I may know a Maryam. I am not certain.”  
She sighs, causing a strand of hair to be picked up by the spout of bubbles that follow this sigh and to drift back down across her face. Beside her are two long braids you at first mistake for feelers- with their long, thin black shape, it is by no means a stretch of the imagination to think of them as feelers. Her arms are long and corded in a way that suggests she spends most of her time either using or practicing with the giant, golden trident that is propped up to her left. She has no legs to speak of, unless you could count the sleek, pinkish tail as a pair of legs that have been fused together.  
“Are we in a cell?”  
She glances around at the small, windowless room which is filled with water “Yeah.”  
“Fuck.”  
“You sure you ain’t a Maryam?”  
“No, now that I think about it. There may have been a Maryam somewhere earlier in my family line.”  
The woman nods “Good, ‘cos y’all got her gills and it’d shore surprise me if you ain’t reel-lated.”  
You blink. In some strange way, your vocabulary has managed to translate into this so beautifully and smoothly that, by listening to the inflections on her words and observing the slight quirk of her sharp mouth every time she delivers one, you understand each and every ocean-related pun.  
You reach to scratch your legs, pleased to have your hands free.  
“Oh.”   
“What?”  
“Where did my legs go?”  
“Into the tail, duh. I thought you were supposed to be smart.”  
“I challenge you to find an intelligent way to react to discovering yourself breathing underwater in the same room as a…what are you, some kind of royalty?”  
She rolls her shoulders back proudly and seems to glow- no, wait, she really is glowing, from a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose “So you ain’t all as dull as mud. Yeah, I’m the princess. And now I’m a fucking prisoner like you.”  
“Is that what I am?”  
Mesmerised by your tail, you can’t help but be distracted from what she is telling you. The tail is fused with your body about half-way up your hips, stopping just a few inches before anything like genitals has a chance to begin. The tail has a kind of hem of gossamer tissue running around the edge of the tail, as if to show where it begins and the rest of your body ends. Underneath the water, your skin has taken on the quality of a drowned person. Greyish skin- well, that is where the similarities end, really, just the colour of your skin. You can tell you are still alive, although it wouldn’t surprise you to find out you are in fact dead after all this time underwater.  
In the sides of your neck, your skin opens and closes gently, regularly. Gills, you would guess. Carefully, you trace a fingertip along the rim of one of the cuts in your neck and are surprised to find the tissue does not yield. Underwater, it is stiff and strong. Not soft and yielding the way Cronus’s are.  
“Shit!”  
The woman- no, she’s more of a girl- startles “What?”  
“My husband!”  
The girl glances around the room “Where?”  
“No, not here! He’s…oh he had better still fucking be on dry land or I’m going to be very angry with him!”  
Bewildered, the girl inches backwards, away from you “You…you flappin’ about Cro, right?”  
“How do you know him? Oh, don’t tell me. You must be his fiancé.”  
The girl’s face sours “Yeah, that’s me. Cro’s fiancé and husband stuffed into the same block, so they must be hopin’ one of us will make a floater outta the other. For the record, I’d win.”  
“No you would not,” you say, with feeling “I’ve got a family to get back to. From what Cronus has told me of you, and, granted, his perceptions can sometimes be nothing short of wilfully ignorant, but you only have a sister and a kingdom that doesn’t care who’s on the throne as long as they’re nice and keep the taxes down. Believe me, if you want to start a fight, I will be the one who walks- swims away.”  
The girl stares at you. Her eyes are wide and a shocking pink that somehow manage the job of being both neon and utterly intimidating.  
While she tries to process the sass she has just been handed, you collect your scattered memories of the past few days.  
On the beach, when you were walking Girl, you were kidnapped. By mermaids. Not a claim that many can make.   
There was nothing especially unusual about the kidnapping, except that your attackers exploded out of the water as you were crossing an out-cropping of rock, sank their claws into your legs and dragged you into the water before you had time to scream. They were two, large, blue-scaled mers that seemed to be the mer equivalent of the kind of men that loiter in dark allies for a chance at wallets and purses. One of them cut their thumb open as the other dragged you into deeper water and smeared their blood on either side of your neck, which caused your gills to open.  
And after that, your memory is a disjointed series of dreams. One was of Karkat, dreaming of you. Another was of waking up in this room with your hands bound and your vision blocked, which turned out to be true. There were a couple more like the second until the girl finally removed your blindfold and allowed you to wake up completely.  
And you don’t know much more.  
As to the city outside? All you know is what Cronus has told you, and that’s not much. He prefers to talk about his home as little as possible, if he can get away with it.  
“Your name is Meenah, right?”  
She startles “How do you- oh, that fucker, did he chat shit about me?”  
“Yes, and plenty of it. Most of it was positive but he did not appreciate being in an arranged marriage.”  
Meenah scoffs “You think I do? I got bigger fish to fry an’ when he was around- now I’m a fucking widow and we weren’t even ever married. How do you think I fucking feel? Fucking honestly, you people, you only think of yourselves.”  
You give her a sharp look which silences her “You and I are going to have a talk now. It’s going to be a long, difficult talk to have, I’m sure, but it’s going to happen and you’re going to deal with it. Understand?”  
Meenah crosses her arms and juts her bottom lip out “I don’t have to take this shit from you, guppy. You can barely swim.”  
“I really do not wish to threaten you, but if it becomes necessary for me to do so and go a little further then please do not be fooled by the belief that I will not literally throttle the answers out of you.”  
Meenah looks at you and considers her options, her tail swishing slowly in the small currents. The feeling of being enclosed entirely in water as if it were air is disconcerting to say the least. But at the same time, it is a sensation that you cannot help but feel as if you were waiting for for most of your life. The tail, while it was surprising to find, does not feel unnatural either.  
Perhaps you are a Maryam. Whatever that means.  
“You even know what a Maryam is?” asks Meenah, as if reading your mind “You should, seein’ as you look exactly like her. I expect they woulda already krilled you dead, but you look so much like her…well I don’t know what to do with you. Gog only knows what the public would spray, if you got offed up in front of every-bubble.”  
“No, I don’t know what a Maryam is.”   
Seeing as the room is completely bare, apart from the trident that sits neglected next to Meenah like a toy she has grown bored of, you figure there is nothing to do but get yourself orientated in this world. You will need it, if you are to survive once they take you out of this…’block’, did she call it? The word that Cronus occasionally uses in the place of ‘room’.  
“She’s our greatest hero. Most powerful girlfrond there ever was,” says Meenah, twirling the end of her braid absently “She had all these quests. All the time. Saved the kingdom from just about every-bubble but the Sea Witch, and that’s only because King Ampora took down the old salt herself. The lady, she had schools of followers. Scads. A whole fucking fleet, I and mean that literally. She died, though. Don’t know how, ‘cos no one was there to see it. She musta floated in battle with this one, gigantic Kraken thing that was coming up through the rift between the city.”  
“Rift?”  
“The whole city’s strung up over a gorge. Didn’t you see that?”  
You shrug “I’ve been unconscious the entire time. I suppose Cronus may have mentioned something about a gorge between the halves of the city.”  
Meenah scowls “Oh I bet he just spewed every one of our darkest secrets.”  
“Actually,” you say waspishly “He was very good about keeping his past to himself.”  
That scowl only deepens “I was talking. She krilled the Kraken, the Kraken krilled her. That’s what we figured. Then ‘bout seventeen years later we got our young prince- that’s your buoyfrond’s papa- coming up, the spawn of one of the court, this lady called Eridan with a whale of a plan for her fry or something like that. Sea Witch sees trouble coming. See, we got our own system of royalty in place. I’m…”  
“The Sea Witch’s daughter?”  
She glares at you, drawing her tail closer to her as if she expects you to lash out at her “How…oh, yeah. Cronus told you, huh?”  
You nod. Apart from the fact that Cronus had a betrothed and that she also happened to be one of the only two of the former tyrant’s progeny, you know nothing about Meenah. From the way she reacted to this, though, you expect she has dealt with far more negative reactions to the circumstances of her parentage than what she just go from you.  
“Cronus also told me how it works. He was anxious to complain about the role he stood to fill, you see…as I understand it, there were two possible lines of royalty, yes? Something about the separate heads of the tribes that came together to form this city?”  
She nods sullenly. Obviously, you are stealing her thunder.  
“And as I understand it, Cronus’s line is descended from one of the heads, while yours is of the other’s? And this is the first time those lines were to cross. The opposing royalty took turns to lead, but with what the Sea Witch had done to the city and the sea at large they thought it best that one from each household was paired up and ruled as a couple?”  
“You got it.”  
“So, what happened to Maryam?”  
“She came back from the dead.”  
Interesting “Is that a common occurrence down here?”  
Meenah rolls her eyes “It is if they ain’t krilled in the first place. She faked her death.”  
“And…and what does this have to do with me?”  
“It don’t. I’m ray-counting a story here, so shaddap and let me talk, ok?”  
You hold your hands up in a gesture of surrender, thinking about how much you would like to pop her in the nose.  
“So, she made her rayturn, and it weren’t triumphant or nofin. It was just kinda…surprising? I mean I was too young to be there, obviously, since I’m only as old as…how old are you?”  
“Twenty something.”  
Apparently she thinks that is a real measurement of time, because she nods sagely before continuing her story “Neither of us were around when all this shit went down, so I can’t say for shore what it was like. Just that the Sea Witch did a number on the city and Maryam went right back and did a number on her. Kicked her fins right outta the city, with the King’s help, the wave I hear it. It was a big deal.”  
If you hear ‘ray’ jammed into one more pun, you may really have to take that trident away and express your displeasure. Wow, your patience has run thin. It impresses you sometimes, how quick you can be to anger. Though you suppose you have a good reason to be irritable and short-tempered. Who knows how many days you have been sealed in this room, trying to remember how to breathe through gills you can’t even remember having in the first place? More than enough to merit this shortness of patience, that’s for shore.  
Sure, you mean sure.  
“And what made this woman so special? I’m having a difficult time grasping why she was such a valuable asset to the city.”  
Meenah considers this, but the sneer on her face suggests that she can’t believe your ignorance and is sharing some of the desire to deliver a punch to the nose “You think every-bubble down here cod stand up to a Kraken and all the other scary shit she fought?”  
You shrug “I am not very well acquainted with the culture.”  
“But you married our estranged future King.”  
“And the estranged future King did his duty, when it comes to keeping secrets. All I know is why he was on dry land in the first place, and some trivia about court-life.”  
Meenah starts forward suddenly, her face hungry “Whale?”  
“What whale?”  
“Whale, why was he up there!” she snaps.  
“Oh. Well, if you don’t know there might be a good reason for that.”  
Her hand twitches towards the shaft of the trident.  
“Ok, ok. It was because his father wanted him to assimilate to the life on dry-land. I believe…well, Cronus was always vague on the details, but it may have had something to do with an invasion?”  
Meenah pauses for a time before she echoes this. She must have been deciding between puns “An inraysion?”  
Personally, you would have appreciated ‘inwavesion’ a little more.  
“Yes, I think so.”  
She scoffs “The King don’t have the time to be inrayding dry-land! Shit’s weird up there! Every-bubble has two legs and no fronds! And what’s up with all that air? Fuck that, no wave am I going up there!”  
“Perhaps his reasoning was a little more delicate than he first let on. How did you not know about this, by the way?”  
She rolls her eyes “Just ‘cos we were had some matriclamony in the future don’t mean we were close. Fef and Eri- they’re hang around each other ‘cos they’re young and lonely and got no one better to talk to, unless they want to make nice with their guards.” Her face clouds for a moment, at the mention of your brother-in-law and who you suspect may be her little sister.  
Something about the way she mentions the name ‘Fef’ (another one you are familiar with- Cronus mentioned a Feferi frequently with affection) is the same about the way you invoke Karkat’s name. Really, it is an invocation. When you reach a certain age and are well and truly out of what can be considered a childhood, you become aware of all the things you could have done better for your sibling. Their name becomes something like a secret or a spell that can only be spoke of sparingly, lest it destroy something delicate.  
“It don’t matter,” she says abruptly “I was telling a story. The bottom line is this: anyone cod’a done it, I guess, but Maryam made hershelf-”  
“’hershelf?”  
“You know, like an ocean shelf,” she grows impatient “She made hershelf strong enough to do it and she had the bravery to back it all up. No one reely stepped up to help her. Not much, ‘cept for her followers and they were only like, remora on a shark. Folks were scared of her, you know? But I guess they loved her too. Like I said, I weren’t born when she rayturned to fight with the King and banish the Sea Witch.”  
“Wait a minute, how are you alive if the King and Maryam took care of this Sea Witch?”  
Meenah is bewildered by the question “You mean…how was I born?”  
“Yes. Where I come from, the baby has to stew in its mother for nine months before it’s ready to come out.”  
Her face crumples in disgust “That’s weird.”  
“How are your kind born?”  
She turns her nose up “We hatch out of eggs as these nubby little guys with horns. Grubs. We swim around, learning to talk and copying our sires ‘til we get into our cocoons and pop out with big-buoy tails and horn.”  
“My husband hatched out of an egg?”  
She grins “And his husband got baked like a grub loaf for nearly a year.”  
Something about this whole situation clicks. You really are looking at an entirely different species of person.  
For some reason, it has taken you this long to notice a long, curved pair of horns sprouting from either of her temples. Something about your mindset has changed so completely that, even though you are staring at a pair of fucking horns, you can’t possibly register this as weird.   
You reach up to your own head and pat around, nearly skewering your hand on a horn. Compared to Meenah’s, they feel small and blunt. These are definitely for decoration. Well, that’s a relief. You can handle having a completely new body for the moment, but if you might be required to challenge another mer and lock horns with them like a pair of battling moose, you may have to just lay down and cry. Too weird. Too much weird for one day. How many days has it been?  
Even one without knowing where you are will be too much for Cronus. And- oh, God, Karkat and your father will have arrived already, won’t they? God only knows how Cronus will be able to deal with them. Still, you have faith in his ability to handle their shit. You so wanted to be there while Karkat re-joined the living, and you had hoped that you would be able to put him and Gamzee back into contact with each other. You even had a plot of sorts- an amoral, romanticised mess, of course, wherein you would summon Gamzee to the house towards the end of the night, get him and Karkat into the same room and let each other chase each other around screaming until all of their problems were worked out.  
You did not pretend as you concocted this plan that it would fix every single one of Karkat’s numerous problems, the least of them being a crippling social anxiety that has kept him alone and friendless since you moved. Neither did you think that it would save Gamzee. But at least it would give him one more hand to hold as he tried to move on from his depression.  
And now you’re here; in an underwater cell, with a royal mer who may or may not want to kill you for unintentionally robbing her of a husband.   
You did not see this coming.  
“Meenah.”  
“What?”  
“Why are you in here with me? If you’re the Sea Witch’s progeny, shouldn’t you know something about her? Enough to give them a tactical edge?”  
Meenah gives you a cheerless, toothy smile “I don’t know shit about the old salt. I told you, didn’t I? I was spawned years after she left. King Ampora was…he was as old as my fry of a fishster and she’s barely eighteen. See, he was on the throne for a good ten years before he had his sons. Your husband. They found me and Fef’s eggs wave before that. If I were him, I’d’ve squished my egg and called it good. But he waited for us to hatch and here we are. I hatched when Cronus hatched. Fef hatched when his Royal Pain Eridan hatched. Shore was conve-eelnient, wasn’t it?”  
You wince “That pun was not one of your best.”  
She shrugs “S’cuse me, I got a lot on my pan.”  
“Come to think of it, why am I in here? Is Cronus an enemy of the state or something? And why are you in here? What crime did I commit?”  
For a long, silent moment she stares at you. A few bubbles of air creep sideways out of her mouth as she gapes. With nothing better to do, you track the bubbles’ progress and watch them swirl up and away into a small vent that seems to be passing a small, but warm current of water along the ceiling of the room. That’s something to think about using, if you ever feel the need to escape this place. As far as you can see there is nothing in the way of windows or doors- if they are there, then the hinges are seamless and cannot be opened from the inside.  
In short, you’re boned.  
“You don’t know?” manages Meenah.  
You had almost forgotten she was staring at you “No I don’t know anything. It’s best to treat me as if I’ve come in knowing jack-squat about your world because…well, it’s true.”  
“We’re in her clammer, you floating moron.”  
“Clammer? Oh, slammer!”  
“Yes!”  
“Pardon me, sometimes it’s just a tad to work around the fish puns- wait, what? I’ve been captured by the Sea Witch?”  
Meenah nods sullenly “Sorry. I guess I thought the goons that netted you said so.”  
You shake your head, feeling a creeping sense of dread “This is the first I have ever heard of it.”  
She rubs the back of her neck self-consciously “Sorry. This is all kinda my fault.”  
“Oh, is it?”  
She must not expect to see the cool, cruel stare you have her fixed with, because when she looks up she flinches back. Her hand gropes for the trident’s shaft again, but she gives up before she can find it.  
“You let her out.”  
“I let her out.” she nods grimly “I didn’t think she’d…I don’t know what the shell I thought she was gonna do, but I shore as shell didn’t think it would be all this shit.”  
“What has she done?” you press.  
“She…she came up from the gorge. She just kinda…we got these things called Bubbles, you know? They go over the whole city and keep us safe from every-fin that wants to get in. She had me bring her all this shit. I thought it was just to spring her from her clammer, the one the King and Maryam stuck her in, but it was more. It was the ingredients for a spell so fucking old I didn’t even know what it was until she was casting it. She burned up all the bubbles and went in and krilled every-bubble she found. Not like the fires left much alive. She had me watching, of course. I mean I was all about reel-instating the power of my lineage as the domin- nah, you don’t need to know that shit. Long story short, the Sea Witch got out. ‘Cos of me. I cod’a stopped her. I didn’t. I just let her go right ahead and burn every-fin and now she’s running what’s left of the city. I think every-bubble ran. I mean, she ain’t dragged in my fish-ster’s floating corpse or the bodies of anyone else I swim with so…so I guess they’re still fighting. Or they ran. Either way, you and me, frond, we better find waves to get along, ‘cos we’re in here for the long haul.”


	22. John plots while the world slowly ends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short chapter. Full of exposition. I know, this is just lazy story-telling. Hopefully the next chapter will be a little more scintillating.

Your name is John Egbert and you are enraged.  
The thump Dave administer to knock you out this morning has raised a large, blue bruise. You’re sure that if the two of you were talking right now, he would have apologised many times over for hurting you. Always does, when he hurts you. Doesn’t matter if it’s just a little cut from a sparring match, or if he accidentally really does some damage in the heat of battle.   
Well, this isn’t something that you and he are gonna be able to talk out. He knows what Vriska meant to you, better than most people, so he knows that he’s not gonna be able to talk to you for a while, after what he has done. In fact, he was the one that predicted the beginnings of that quadrant before you even knew you had pale feelings for Vriska, and you can’t believe what he made you do. Just thinking about her half-body, all pale and bloodless and chewed by crabs, left to rot on the shore, makes you want to gouge your eyes out. As if removing the organ that saw it can remove the whole image from your head. If you thought it could, you would do it. Really, you would.  
There is almost no recovering from losing a moirail like that.  
When you woke up, you found that Dave had somehow managed the impossible task of getting the two of you back to the camp, without being discovered by a patrol of the Witch’s (which are all over the place, by now) or getting attacked by some lucky predator. He got the both of you back, safe and sound. He left you in the safest place he knew- the mobile block that they had already set up for his brother and some of the other Royal Guard. You have laid here on your back, pretending to be unconscious still, for the better part of an hour. The news is not good.  
Towards the back of the block, several of the Guards are talking. They think that they are alone in the room because you are still unconscious, curled up in Dietrich Strider’s ‘coon. In fact, you have been listening very carefully. You are not only trying to figure out what you are going to need to do to avenge Vriska, but just to figure out what the hell has happened in general.   
All you know up to this point is that there was fire, first, then everyone who escaped collected here, and then you and Dave were searching for Vriska and you found her. And know you need to know who you have to kill to fix this.  
“…King’s son isn’t dead, though. The old salt would know.”  
“So that means that the Witch hasn’t gotten around to killing him yet, or what?”  
“I don’t know, do I? I’m just talking about the family empathic link, here. If the King’s younger son was dead, he’d be a vegetable.”  
“The son? I thought she was killing him, not transfiguring him.”  
Here, there is a pause. You assume the first speaker, Dietrich, is giving the mer that last spoke a withering glare for their display of ignorance. He could be smothering laughter, but that doesn’t seem plausible to you. You have never known him to laugh or smile very much.  
“How is it that you’re still alive?”  
There’s a soft mutter of laughter from the rest of the group. About four or five of them, essentially deciding the future of the mer race and the city.  
“Well I just wanna know what you mean.”  
“You ever had a member of your family die?”  
“Uh, no.”  
“Niofaz hasn’t got a family, sir.” adds one of Dietrich’s subordinates.  
“Let me tell you now that it’s the most painful thing you’ll ever experience, if, through some heinous flaw in judgement, someone ever decides to sleep with you and blesses you with fry.”  
Another scattered, hushed giggle. Lots of people have lost family today. Dietrich would have lost Dave, who is pretty much the only person he has left in the world except for their terrifying sire, known to you as Bro, but to the rest of the world as the King or Condesce’s right hand mer. What they call the King or the Condesce depends on who you ask. You’re not sure what the difference in the titles is, but you know that on the rare occasions that you do run into the old salt, fluke-to-fluke, it’s a good idea to use the latter and bow a lot.  
“Was the Condesce like that when his first son disappeared?”  
“I don’t know, ask my father. All I know is that Eridan is still alive because the King is still acting like a sane mer.”  
Another voice breaks in, brisk and business-like “Now that we’re back on topic, can we stay there? What did the Seniors say we were gonna do about the missing prince? I mean, it hasn’t been that long since we lost him. Only as long since we lost the city and we’ve found about a hundred people again who we thought we lost. Aren’t we gonna put more time and energy into looking for him, or what?”  
You hear someone shaking their head, and the person who responds is not Dietrich “The Condesce wouldn’t do that to us. Make a special effort to find his own fry when so many other people are missing, I mean. The prince has no real tactical value, does he?”  
You feel a prickle of irritation at this. Eridan may not be the nicest person in the world, but you’re fond of him. The two of you are old friends. Through being Dave’s best friend (though that may change, now), you have been close to Eridan all of your life and have had the opportunity many times to hunt him. Anyone who’s ever watched him in action with a harpoon gun or a spear would know better than to say he’s got no tactical value.   
This makes you so prickling mad that you want to spring out of the slime and beat the person into submission, all the while screaming about how wrong and stupid they are. You’ve already lost Vriska today. How many other old friends is the world gonna take from you before this stupid crisis is resolved…well, considering that one of the way this all ends is the death of everything mer that is not loyal to the old Sea Witch, you might end up alone or dead along with all of them by the end of this.  
“Oh, shut up.”  
“Yeah, you ever seen that kid in battle?”  
“He’s got the stuff of the next Maryam, I’m telling ya! And he’s friends with the only Maryam we got left, besides.”  
“What a shallow thing to say.”  
This last one is Dietrich “I’d advise you not to talk about your prince like that. He’s not like the rest of us are, in terms of power or value. The fact that he’s a child should only make us more determined to chase him down.”  
“Alright, alright!” snaps the voice that first suggested Eridan was useless “Gog, pardon me! I didn’t know you were all so deeply, personally attached to the little shit!”  
The reprimands come thick and fast again.  
“Respect your royalty!”  
“Of course we have strong feelings about him! We’re the ROYAL Guard, not the peoples’ Guard!”  
“Uh, there’s not that much difference.”  
“Shut up, I’m making a point here. A point that our friend here is determined to ignore. We’re signed on to protect the prince, so of course we’re gonna be more worried about him. You should remember your vows.”  
Dietrich speaks up again “Niofaz, that’s the smartest thing I’ve ever heard out of your mouth.”  
“Thank- uh, thanks. Thank you, I think.”  
You can’t help but be a little bit mad at them. Granted, they are only the Junior Royal Guard, whose duties rarely extend beyond protecting the castle, rather than the Royals themselves, but you feel as if they should be doing something a little more significant with their time and their power. Something that might stop the next person’s moirail from being killed, not just sitting around and talking about how good Eridan is. It would be really great if they could actually find Eridan instead.  
Hell, if you thought it would get them off their tails, you’d spring out of the slime and tell them to their faces. But it won’t do much more than get you expelled from the room while they freely exchange valuable information and gossip.  
Mostly gossip at this point, which also makes you kinda mad.  
“When are we moving on the city? I mean, we can’t waste much more time consolidating our forces, nor can we wait on the others to come to our aid.”  
Here we go. It’s about to get interesting.  
“I don’t know that we can expect any help from any of the other cities.”  
Dietrich lets out a hollow laugh “As far as they’re concerned, she’s our problem.”  
The one you now know as Niofaz protests “But the first time she was over-thrown, her storms killed mers across all of the Seven Seas! They don’t seriously think that we’re gonna fix the problem all on our own, do they?”  
“It was our Condesce and our hero that did it the first time.”  
“Yeah, well Maryam died trying!”  
“No she didn’t.”  
“Yes she did.”  
“Oh for the love of Gog, if you two are gonna start this debate again, I swear I’ll charge the city myself. I don’t want to listen to that.”  
Dietrich interrupts “You better believe we won’t get any help from those people. They don’t care about what’s happening to the ocean until it’s happening to their prey or their interests. So far the Sea Witch is only killing us, she’s not disrupting feeding patterns.”  
Somebody scoffs “You better believe she will be, once she starts filling up the oceans with poisons and blood! Just look at what she did on dry land. They think she’s not gonna bring that kind of heinous stuff down here?”  
“Oh I’m sure we’re gonna see a lot of last ditch efforts across the Seven seas, but for now? Nope, we’re on our own.”  
“Fuck them!”  
“Hey, be nice. Those people are just scared.”  
“We’re scared too! Fuck them for not helping us. There’s this little thing called ‘collective security’ they could be trying out right now-”  
“Oh, like anyone will ever commit to that. You think our Condesce would be dashing over to save some other city from the Sea Witch?”  
“He would,” says Dietrich “Maybe to satisfy a personal grudge…maybe because he knows what an insanely powerful psychopath she is…but he’d do it and we all know he would.”  
“And we’d get killed in battle for xenophobes.”  
“They’re probably saying the same things in the other seas.”  
Come on, you think desperately, tell me who she’s got working for her. Tell me who to hunt.  
Miraculously, that is exactly what the topic turns to. That’s got to be a sign, right? Gog telling you to grab a spear and get going?  
“How many of you swam to the meeting place immediately?”  
There is the sound of a swishing in the water as several hands go up. You are tempted to rise from your back and peer over to see who it is, but you can’t risk losing this opportunity.  
“So…so none of you have run into the Sea Witch’s patrols yet, huh?”  
“I’ve heard some rumours. Are they accurate?”  
“No, dumbass, they’re rumours…what did you hear?”  
“I heard that the Witch has some nasty-ass golems going around on whale-back and killing everything that moves.”  
“Well you heard that part right.”  
“How did she- but she was entombed! She shouldn’t have been able to get near magic!”  
“Princess Meenah,” chorus several voices at once.  
“The way I hear it, the Condesce gave her the key to her sire’s cage for safe-keeping.”  
Somebody snorts “I wouldn’t trust one of those girls to watch my own fry, let alone keep the sea’s greatest tyrant under lock and key.”  
“Well it’s people like you, going around and saying things like that that made the old salt give her the key in the first place. I guess he thought she needed to know that she was trusted.”  
“But she’s not!” protests the same voice.  
You think it may be the one that was dissing Eridan earlier. This guy sure is asking for a smacking.  
So, a patrol of golems.   
Golems are an old type of magic that involves imbuing a jumble of inanimate objects with a malignant intelligence then giving it the means and the desire to chase a living thing down and kill it. In the old days, the Condesces used them instead of the much more lenient Royal Guards to enforce their will and ensure the seas were being ruled appropriately. Sounds like that the Sea Witch must have had someone on the outside preparing her coup for a long time. That has to be Meenah. As far as you know, Meenah hasn’t been caught by a patrol or been recovered and delivered safely to the camp.  
Good thing for her. If you see her milling around with the survivors of the disaster that she created, then you’d slit her throat open without thinking twice. She has earned it. Your hate. Plenty of mers’ loathing and ill-will, after what she caused. You don’t care if she was brain-washed or abused or manipulated into enabling the Condesce to be free. As far as you’re concerned, she’s a floating fish swimming.  
All of a sudden, you become aware of a commotion outside. You lay flat, but are prepared to bolt out of there like a land-bat out of human-hell in case it means trouble- if the Sea Witch has found you already, or one of those golem patrols has sneaked into the camp. The Guard must be thinking along the same lines to, because you hear swords being readied and a mutter from someone who is neither Dietrich nor Niofaz to be prepared.  
You hear silence fall outside, except for one or two screams of horror.  
“She’s fainted!” shouts somebody.  
“Somebody get the Condesce!” shouts another.  
Then comes a voice from the front of the block, and immediately after it, a smell of familiar, but stale blood that immediately makes your eyes tear up and your throat seize in horror.  
“I’ve got a dead child here…she was on the shore of my home-town on dry land. Someone care to explain this to me?”  
You straighten up.  
“John!” barks Dietrich “Don’t look at it!”  
The woman that has just entered the block is carrying a small bundle. Too small to be the child she’s claiming it is. A ribbon of a special type of blue blood drifts up into the water and hangs, like a question mark, over the corpse.  
You cover your eyes.  
“Porrim Maryam,” breathes one of the Royal Guard.  
“Oh for the love of Gog. I suppose this means all of our dead heroes are going to be coming back? Well, where’s the elder prince?”  
Finally, somebody smacks the owner of that smug, derisive voice.  
Then, mercifully, you lose consciousness before the smell of Vriska’s blood and Vriska’s corpse can fill your nose.


	23. The romance of underwater politics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter for effect, or from lack of time and exhaustion?  
> It's for the historians to decide.

Your name is Feferi Peixies, and you’re a princess.  
A special kind of princess. Not the kind that gets pampered and can win the love of a whole nation by fluttering her eyelashes. The kind that is almost universally loathed by her society for the simple truth of her parentage. As a result, you know a few things that your friends don’t know how to do.  
Because you’re a pariah, you know how to win a fight.  
Because you’re a princess, you know how to look graceful as fuck in the process.  
Right now, you’re making a goddamned art piece out of spearing an orca whale. Seriously, right now, you look so stunning and so crazy it’s kind of scaring the golem, whose steed you are spearing, into an awed silence that a creature supposedly without sentience shouldn’t be capable of. Normally, you don’t think about how good you look when you’re fighting. You tend to think about dying when fighting, but it’s been a long time since you allowed yourself to have a positive thought about yourself without first getting a heaping portion of encouragement from Eridan, your future husband and current best friend, or Dave, his long-time guard and full-time grub-sitter. Though you may have been raised with relative affection by your legal guardian, the Condesce, it’s kind of hard to form a positive opinion of yourself while growing up under the glowers of the wider community that you must rule one day.  
Meenah, your big sister, doesn’t give a swimming shit. She is of the opinion that anyone who doesn’t immediately fall in love with her oceans of wit and charm is missing out on something major, and that should serve as punishment enough.  
Right now, you’re thinking like Meenah. Your tail is pumping as you charge to the surface with the orca, still snapping its bloody jaws at you, and thrust it into the air. From land, if there are a few dirt-pounders around to gape, this must look really weird. Surprise whale on a giant golden fork.  
Let their silly scientists figure that one out.  
You fling the orca off your fork, about thirty feet deeper into the ocean. It splashes and sinks without complaint. It’s a shame. You despise killing. It’s just not in your nature to look at a living organism and to want to kill it, as it is in Eridan’s. You would have loved to take that whale home and rehabilitated it to be a friendly, helpful whale, but it was not meant to be.  
But as for the golem? These things are designed for destruction only so, no, there is no sympathy nor guilt tempering your urge to kill.  
Its muscles are rock. Its sinew are tightly wound cords of kelp- at first you thought of this as a design flaw, like you could pluck at the cords and the whole thing would fall apart. The kelp didn’t so much as bend under the weight of your attack, the result of which was a scrape to your side that is bleeding busily into the open water. It’s what set off the orca in the first place, your blood.  
Ribbons of fuchsia drift around you in much bigger quantities than you are comfortable with.  
The golem hangs in the water, as weightless as your blood as it drifts for the surface. It is keeping its distance. If you lunge for it, then it will either dodge you or catch you easily with its long arms. The design of these things is essentially a copy of an octopus- eight strong limbs, a big beak in the middle to crunch your pan-helmet to shreds when you get close enough. You kind of don’t understand why it needs a steed at all, because it looks like it could be as fast as lightning if you give it the chance to chase you. But, whatever.  
If the golem feels better about itself when riding on an orca, then who are you to tell it to do otherwise?  
“Golem,” you say, your voice tinged with pain “Can you tell me somefin, since I’ve about to die here?”  
The golem’s black pebble eyes are emotionless and disinterested, but you hope that it will not refuse a question like this with your logical reasoning. Golems are banned magic, of course, but in the old tales that the Condesce is fond of telling you and his sons (son, now, you keep forgetting Cronus is dead even this long after his death), the way to beat them was by confusing them with cold, hard, simple logic.  
“I mean, it’s not like I’m going to tell anybubble, am I? And given the position dictated by my blood and my heritage, I think I deserve to know what the shell it is my sire is doing. I am her fry, after all.”  
The golem’s eyes flicker, perhaps with recognition. When it speaks, its voice is flat. It doesn’t know how to make the words sound like actual words- they just sound like noises, but strung together into patterns that you’ve grown up using and hearing.  
It sets your teeth on edge.  
“Rightful claim to the Condesce’s name,” it says flatly “Cannot be fully realised until the entirety of the royal lines are deceased to achieve absolute monopoly. Forced abdication is assured.”  
Your pain-addled pan works fast to put this together “You’re gonna krill us all…to make sure that no one else can legally claim the throne?”  
“From this point, Condesce Peixes is free to legally resume the duties of Condesce Ampora.”  
You lick your cracked lips “So you’re trying to create a legitimised claim to the throne that none of the other six nations can challenge, once the Sea Witch makes her hostile take-over a formal public knowledge?” damn, you should have slipped a fish pun in there to lighten the mood.  
“Correct. Termination of Feferi Peixes will commence.”   
The golem starts towards you.  
Spinning your trident, you clasp your other hand against the hole in your side, trying to plug up the bleeding “The shell it will, buddy.”


	24. It's like Flipper, except with more blood and guts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More teenaged shenaniganising, immediately followed by a long-awaited college flash-back. Next chapter will feature some Erisol. And a lot of screaming and coughing blood and defending small, mythical creatures.

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you’re still trying to figure out what you’re going to tell your father. For the past ten or so minutes, you and Equius have been sitting in the sand. Well away from the patch of conspicuously stained sand where you initially saw the body. Equius believes you now, as he well should. Everyone should just take your word for everything. You need a sash to tell people how they just need to immediately believe what you say- how you’re the information Queen. The information Emperor- no, no, who are you kidding? You’re a Queen at heart. Poofy dresses twice your size and weight to impress the court, and heavy jewellery all the way.  
It’s gonna be fucking awesome.  
“This is the start of a fucking nightmare,” you announce.  
Equius is still mesmerised by the faint, blue stains of blood in the water. It came off his legs easily enough, oozing away like oil back into the water, but he says he can still feel it. Even you can smell the slight tang of salt and iron coming off of him. Strange to think that whatever secret race of underwater overlords that this girl sprung from have copper-scented blood, just like you.  
She looked exactly like you as well.  
She could have been a girl from your species so easily. The only thing to separate her were the scales, the horns and the greyish skin.  
“Obviously, this has to do with the rain.” you nudge him sharply in the side with your elbow, to let him know he needs to be agreeing with just how fucking obvious it all is “Right? First we get us a rain that melts people, like, literally melts people. And my brother disappears in the middle of it. He’s totally not dead, by the way, so don’t start trying to tell me he is or I’m gonna pop you in the mouth.”  
“I agree with you.” says Equius dully.  
His eyes are fixed on the water where the blue blood still drifts. With a slight pang of sadness, you note that his eyes are almost the same colour as the blood. Those eyes weren’t always so blue, where they? Used to be more green than anything, when you were younger. What else about your friends has changed, you wonder? How long is it gonna take you to notice, to catalogue these little differences?  
To know your home and your family again.  
“So what do we do about it?”  
“I’m going to tell Nepeta.”  
“Well, duh, ok, we tell the others.”  
It is not a particularly logical choice, you know. Sollux, Aradia, Nepeta and Gamzee are, in fact, probably the least qualified group of fuckwads on the face of the planet, to be tasked with saving the planet. And even though you haven’t had that explicitly stated for you, you already understand that is what this is. A mission, being ham-fistedly handed to you and Equius in the guise of a murder mystery. A demand, in fact, that you tug your head out of your ass and Equius and the others do the same, that the lot of you toss your problems aside for the moment and band together and just work as a team.  
You’re not sure where to start. Or even, why to start, when there’s a cluster of perfectly capable, more matured and responsible adults less than a mile away.  
You just know that, because you found it first, the trouble heading your way is yours and Equius’s, and yours to decide with whom it is shared. That’s just all there is to it.  
With all of this buzzing in your head, you turn to look at Equius to see if he’s thinking the same kinds of things. But his face is impassive, almost uninterested in what is occurring around him.  
“Are you going into shock?”  
He takes one, unsteady breath “If I feel that my organs and internal systems at large are about to shut down, I will make sure that you are the first to know.”  
“Ok, sass-master, I was just asking.”  
“I don’t know if they are. I wouldn’t be surprised. This is…this is the kind of situation in which it is appropriate for one to lose their head, isn’t it?”  
“Not when you’re talking like that. If you really think you’re gonna lose your shit, you need to be babbling about alien conspiracies and running into things and suspicious of my humanity. I could be one of those things, for all you know.”  
He gives you a sharp look “You’re not confessing, are you?”  
“What? No, fuck off!” now it is your turn to narrow your eyes at him “You know, you’ve always been freakishly strong.”  
He glowers “That’s only in comparison to the rest of you. When you put myself against someone like Sol, who has to be reminded to eat with regularity and seems surprised that the sun is still burning every time he leaves his house…well, a good diet and exercise look like superhuman abilities.”  
“Alright. As long as you’re not gonna grow horns on me.”  
“She had horns?”  
“I said that, didn’t I?”  
“I could barely make out what you were saying. You were running at Mach 2 and almost completely incoherent.”  
“I was not incoherent.”  
“Yes you were. And it was all Farsi.”  
Incensed at the suggestion of your idiocy, you jump to your feet “You speak Farsi! You’re Iranian!”  
“That wasn’t any Farsi I’d ever heard before,” he retorts “Can you tell me precisely what it is you saw, now that you have those alleged wits back together.”  
You snap your fingers at him “The sass! I’m gonna start calling you Sassquius if you don’t stow it, mister!”  
He closes his mouth, probably against his wishes. He lets you talk.  
Which of course means, gesticulating helplessly and breaking off in the middle of sentences as you try to figure out how to express it “It was a girl, but, like, not a girl. Grey-skinned. And it wasn’t from drowning. Her colouring was as natural as you being brown, ok? And she had these- these scales,” you lift up your shirt to point out where it would be on your hips, nearly flashing Equius your boxers in the process “See, right here. And it was just totally flush with her skin. She was a mermaid or something.”  
He cocks an eyebrow; surprise, not scepticism.  
“Did she have a tail?”  
“No, she was bitten in half.”  
Equius stands up suddenly, backing away from the water as if the waves rushing to the shore are full of teeth “And you let me go in there?”  
“You’re like a foot taller than me, and besides, you didn’t believe what I was saying. How the hell is a dainty little guy like me gonna stop you, you column of sweating flesh?”  
“Pardon me, but that is under control now! You shouldn’t poke fun at other people’s hormone problems!”  
You clap a hand over your white hair “Whoa, whoa, are you suggesting something about my genetics, you sweating freak? Bring it the fuck on. Fuck dainty, I will destroy you with-with, uh-” you grasp uselessly at the thin air “I’ll just use my hands and teeth. We’ll see how that goes.”  
Surprisingly, rather than tackling you into the sand to show you a thing or too (he would own you: if he’s a tank, then you’re a unicycle), he raises his hands in a placating gesture.  
“Alright, alright. Calm down, let’s just…let’s just plot a course of action from here.”  
Good thing one of you has their heads screwed on straight today, or Equius probably would have snapped your spine in half over his knee.  
You growl at him “Fine. You want to know what I think? I think we’re about to get launched into a whole mess of trouble and I want my friends to know and to help me. Fuck responsible adults.”  
“I agree with you,” he says slowly “But I’m not sure why.”  
“I don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier- oh shit, my phone’s dead!”  
Cursing with more foulness than before, you stuff the chunk of technology in your pocket and glance around, as if you might conveniently find another one. Or a phone-box. Or the necessary equipment to make some nice, clean smoke signals.  
“See, this is why we need something like the Bat Signal. Something that just screams ‘assholes assemble’, or, like, one of those whistles that only dogs and other small, dumb animals can hear. I guarantee that Nepeta and Gamzee would come running for one of those. Quit staring at me, pretty boy! Make the damned call, will you?”  
“I can’t. You tore me away without my phone. Nepeta has it.”  
Letting out a growl of frustration, you sink to your knees and stare at the blood. If you leave now, you just know there’s gonna be nothing in the way of evidence to prove that you and Eq aren’t just fucking around. Maybe they’d believe that there was some kind of mermaid torso languishing in the surf if it were only Equius telling them- he doesn’t have anywhere near enough of a sense of humour to prank anyone, let along enough imagination to settle on a mermaid, of all things. That raises the question: even when the assholes are assembled, how are you going to convince them that they need to get behind you on this?  
Another question: what the hell even is this?  
What the fuck do you think you’re doing, trying to save the world? Why can’t you leave it up to people who know what they’re doing, with things like guns and knives and rocket-launchers and submarines?  
Probably because of exactly that. All those weapons. Someone’s gonna use them. You get the feeling that this isn’t the kind of problem to be hurling live ammunition at until enough of it is blown up to ease the minds of the American public, and the wider public. This is the kind of problem that shouldn’t be sealed away in a cell in Area 51 either. No matter what angle you come at it from, you just can’t make yourself think otherwise.  
That girl was somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s friend. So she, and her problem, deserves to be handled by people who are still too young to identify as anything but being sons, daughters, otherwise, and friends. People who are old enough to think their way out of scary situations, but too young to wreck the whole thing with government interests.  
You’re about to say as much to Equius when you realise that he won’t hear you. He is completely spaced out, staring at whatever has snagged his attention in the surf.  
“What?” you snap your fingers under his nose, and he bats your hand away “Hello, paging Equius, come back to earth.”  
“Karkat, what is that?”  
He points out what looks like a huge glob of dark seaweed in the shallows, just beyond the surf. But as another wave washes over it, you realise that it’s not seaweed of any kind. It’s a lot of dark hair, and a pale, grey face underneath. There are horns, too. Straight up devil horns. As you’re watching the body drifting closer to the shore, a fluked tail bobs up behind the body.  
“Why is the water pink?” is the only thing you can think to ask.  
“Blood?’” guesses Equius.  
He goes to the edge of the surf and wades in gingerly, wary that the second mermaid might spring up and attack him. You follow him, and every nerve in your body is tingling with the urge to run. You won’t be able to resist it, if the mermaid- the mer? What’s their word for themselves, anyway- does sit up and take a chunk out of his face.  
Equius glances at you “She’s hurt. Very badly.”  
“I don’t…uh, Cronus’s house?”  
He nods “Good idea.”  
“Be careful.” you urge. You can’t quite make yourself go in after him, though it’s the right thing to do.  
The right thing to do is not a very attractive option right now.  
Equius makes his way over to the corpse very carefully, and once he has loomed over her for a moment, his face impassive and imperious, he reaches down and catches her arms. He collects her to him like he’s dragging an injured member of a sport team off the field, leaving her tail to twist and trail in the water after her. You have to gasp when you see the wound that’s knocked her unconscious and dyed the water pink. Why does it have to be pink? Mermaid (topless girl mermaid, oh God, no, you can’t deal with boobs right now) getting hauled out of the water by a friend you haven’t seen in years, and she has to be dumping bucket after bucket of pink blood in the ocean, just to shove your face into the metaphorical sand of weird and grind it there.  
“Is she dead?”  
“No,” says Equius a tad uncertainly “She’s- no, look, her eyes are rolling.”  
Her eyes race back and forth underneath greying eyelids. This looks like an unhealthy grey to you. Her skin seems bloodless and washed out, like the skin of a fever patient about to tip over into the life-threatening range of temperatures. As soon as Equius has her on the sand, you swallow your fears and come to kneel next to him. He takes off his shirt and begins to tear it into strips to bind her wound. While he’s doing that, you ball up your fist in your shirt and use it to wipe away the blood and sand from the wound as best you can.  
When you touch her, her skin tenses up and her teeth clench. You’re sure she’s about to spring for you, but instead, she just whimpers.  
“We need to wake her up.”  
“You- what? Why?”  
He flashes you a glare “Look at that wound. That’s not the kind of wound that you can just sleep off, Karkat. If she stays asleep now, she’s likely to stay asleep for however much longer she’s got.”  
Your mouth turns dry “Alright. Fine.”  
She’s settled in Equius’s lap at this point, so he can work on binding the gaping wound in her side. She’s got an awful lot of black, curly hair, and it’s all so long and so scattered about her body that you’re worried she’s tangle herself up in it if she starts to writhe and freak out.  
“Can you get her hair up?”  
Equius, bless him, doesn’t ask questions. He just hops to it.  
You’re about to start trying to wake her up when the hairs on the back of your neck prickle.  
“Is that fucking mermaid?”  
Nepeta, Gamzee and Aradia are standing there. Just- BOOM! Suddenly, there’s the whole fucking peanut gallery right there, except for Sollux, and you can only assume he must have found some hot boy to bone because you have no fucking idea where he is.  
Nepeta’s gaping. Gamzee, whose face has never been able to express the extremes of emotion through his general incredibly chilled-out stupor, looks on in mild surprise. And Aradia? She looks like a kid who’s just been handed the key to a candy store and told to go nuts.  
Nepeta chews on her bottom lip “Eq? What is this?”  
“I don’t know. Whatever it is, she’s dying,” he nods towards the bloody surf “That pink stuff is our red stuff- blood, I mean, blood.”  
“Motherfuckin’ weird. Hey, bro, where’s yer shirt at?”  
You jump in “We had to use something to keep her from bleeding to death.”  
“Want mine?” without waiting for any sign that you do, Aradia strips her shirt off. Underneath, she’s wearing a bra and a tiny tank-top that makes it so she might as well just be wearing the bra.  
Surprisingly, Equius catches it when it is tossed to him and starts to tear it up without hesitation.  
“Hey, she alive?”  
“Yes Gamzee, she’s alive,” you shoot him a withering glare, although you’re not sure what he’s done to deserve it “For the moment. Apparently, unless we wake her up, she’s going to die soon. I’m just working off Eq’s expertise, so it’s possible that’s bullshit.”  
“No, no it’s not. He woke Latula up, after the accident.” asserts Aradia “And he was like, ten, then, so he knows what he’s doing.”  
“I wasn’t ten.” he retorts, wrapping a large strip of bandage around the mermaid’s side “I was-”  
“You look like a ten year old in my memory, so it must be true. Do you want me to run back to town for help?”  
Nepeta shifts her weight uncomfortably “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I just…after the rains? I don’t know if people are gonna want to help her.”  
They have all come over to your side of the argument, the save-the-mermaid-and-fuck-adult-supervision-side, so fast it’s giving you whiplash. And what’s this about the accident? Kankri told you so little about it, apart from a catalogue of injuries and deformities that people walked away with. You never knew it was in your home-town. You never knew Equius was there- or for that matter, that your other friends were there to see their older siblings being damaged.  
You’ll have to worry about that later, because now Gamzee is beside you and he’s bringing the mermaid around gently by squeezing her shoulder and muttering something that sounds like a comfort in Turkish.

Karkat Vantas: turn into your brother from five years back for no real reason ===========>  
College!Kankri: where have you been? =============>

Where have you been? It’s been, like, six chapters.  
Oh, around. Growing up, falling in love. Between the sheets. All the good stuff.  
Which is not to say that you’re in a good place right now. Oh, no, no this is a very bad place to be, even though you know there have been countless family members in your position before, and it is probably inappropriate for you to be trying to equate the grief and the dread that has knotted your stomach and- just, just poisoned you in over-powering doses with anything on the level that a family member might experience. For sure, Latula and Kurloz’s real families, by blood, must be feeling a great deal more of it than you are.  
Still, it’s only you, Cronus and Rus here. You feel as if you haven’t seen Rus in eons, but now is no time to be getting reacquainted. When you saw that he was there in the waiting room, you just pulled him into a hug, which of course is the worst possible thing you could have done. But, after going so long without seeing your old friend, you have forgotten his triggers. The most major and urgent is his aversion to being touched without warning. Well, whoops.  
“I cannot believe this happened.” you’re saying for the fifth time “I- I don’t know what to think about this. Do they know if they planned this, yet? Are they investigating?”  
Cronus is doing his best to calm your flurries of panicked activity, but he’s almost too agitated to be of any comfort “They’re just w-workin’ on ‘em right now. Calm down, babe. Save yer energy ta fuss at ‘em when they get better.”  
You turn to Rus “Still no word from back home?”  
“No.”  
Thank God that Rus is here. He’s calm by nature and stoic in practice, which is a marked difference to the way you’re in a helpless tizzy of fear and nerves at the moment. It’s likely that you would have driven Cronus entirely insane by now, if Rus wasn’t around to gently shut you up every now and then.  
“Why-”  
He nods out the darkened window “The storm, Kankri. It’s a thick one.”  
Covering your face with your hands, you lean into Cronus’s shoulder and let him hold you upright. At this point, your own legs are almost too weak to manage to task “Ugh, God. Allah. Bismallah. Why did the damned weather have to be against us too?”  
Cronus glances towards the window in that special, furtive way that he does when he’s concerned something from his world might be about to make an appearance. It has been two years and, apart from having to disappear back beneath the waves every summer to make a report to his father and an assortment of other mer royalty. And to visit his betrothed. Oh, yeah, that was a fun afternoon, when he told you about that little awkwardness in the way of the two of you having a real future together.  
You don’t even want to think about the powers in play behind this. As far as you’re concerned, it was just an explosion. It was just an accident.  
“We were very lucky,” says Rus, keeping his voice measured so you have less chance of hearing the hitch in it “Unreasonably lucky, I would say, that the reaction was as quick as it was.”  
The way you understand it, when the Dockside exploded, the only two in close enough range to be badly damaged were Latula and Kurloz. And apparently, while the rest of the Dockside were just stumbling round in confusion with their ears ringing, it was Rus’s little brother Equius that took the initiative and fished Latula out of the water. He was also the one that kept her awake. In the brief glimpse you had of her through the windows before the doctors shrouded your view, you noticed that the insides of one of her arms- the one not cut to ribbons by shrapnel, because she had used it to shield her face- was covered in small, half-moons of reddened flesh where she had been pinched and prodded awake.  
According to Rus, who was in the helicopter with her when she and Loz were air-lifted out, she was complaining about Eq on the way over: “Little shit wouldn’t leave me alone…”  
Or something along those lines. You’re not too sure. Neither is Rus. Apparently he was also caught in a haze of fear and panic that prevented him from understanding what was coming out of Latula’s torn mouth, which you can’t really imagine from him.  
“Have you at least spoken to them since they went in?”  
Rus holds up his phone to show you he has lost the connection “The storm’s messing it all up, I think. And your phones?”  
Cronus doesn’t have one, but he doesn’t offer this. (He claims he’s far too used to using the mer version, which apparently involves shouting into a shell, to try anything else without probably blowing his cover.)  
You tell him that the charge has long since run out on yours. On the way to the hospital, you were pretty much on the phone with him all the way there. The explosion on the Dockside had propelled pieces of shrapnel in nearly every direction. One of those directions happened to be towards the small, the only clinic that the town has. Your grandmother used to run that clinic, but it has passed into the hands of some lesser folks. You have no doubt that she would have been totally fine with trying to treat traumatic and life-threatening injuries with a hole in her ceiling and a smoking, barnacle-encrusted dock support in her office, but the newer owners weren’t having any of that.  
And anyway, the facilities weren’t good enough for the scope of injuries that Latula and Loz had- only those two, you have noted with some scepticism and alarm. You don’t know what kind of conspiracy they might be involved in. Ever since Mituna passed, they have kept each other’s company almost constantly and can be observed in the halls of the school, staging harried and irritated conversations in hushed whispers that tend to dwindle into meaningful stares every time someone comes within earshot.  
Rus must see what you’re thinking, because he says “They didn’t blow themselves up.”  
Cronus looks at you in alarm “Kanny, this is Loz and ‘Tula w-we’re talkin’ about. You know-w they’re both…they’re both smart, babe. They’re not the follow-win’ type.”  
“I wasn’t suggesting that they were…were attempting to follow Mituna. I was just suggesting that they might be attempting something unsavoury in response to something else unsavoury they may have witnessed.”  
Rus’s face darkens “Good Lord, not you too. Kankri, don’t tell me that you’re subscribing to the same crazy ideas as Latula and Loz are.”  
You hold your hands up “No, no, of course not. I don’t- no. I know Mituna just…he had a lot of pain. And he ended all of that with his own hands.”  
Sighing, Rus drops his face to his hands and rolls his shoulders back, trying to shake some of the cramps. He has been standing or sitting, or pacing more often, in this waiting room for the better part of five hours, and has had your company for only the last two. You imagine those hours have been the most distressing. You have been asking the same questions over and over again, and even if you had your head on straight today, Rus has never found it easy to take your company in large doses.  
“But what you’re telling me is that they- they gave to you the impression that they were attempting to end it all?”  
“I don’t know, Kankri. It seems pretty convenient to me that the two people the most deeply involved with Mituna just happened to be at the Dockside when it blew up. That’s all.”  
His words bounce around in your mind, ricocheting off a hundred other cluttered thoughts. In the end, you can think of nothing more to say. So you plant yourself in one of the hard, plastic seats and watch the traffic of the ward go by while Cronus holds your hand tightly.  
It surprises him, still, how fragile humans are. On the two occasions so far that he has had to leave you for the entire summer break to report back to his father, he always leaves telling you the same thing.  
“You people are so fragile, physically. W-we could w-wipe you all out w-with a w-wav-ve.”  
He’s too fond of telling you that. At least he doesn’t do it with a wicked grin, but that is pretty much the only comfort you have when you think about the fact that everyone you love lives or has parents on the same damned little piece of coast.  
Fragile. Does that mean that he could have easily survived the explosion without laceration, without a scrape? It is not stretch of the imagination to picture your boyfriend strolling away from a fireball, dusting himself off and smoothing his hair into tousled perfection again. Loz and Latula are never going to be the same again, going by the state of them in the little glimpse you caught through the windows. Well, you only saw Latula. From what Rus tells you that Eq told him that was backed up by the rest of the spectators, Latula was further from the blast than Loz. It prompts a shudder each time, to think what he might look like now.  
After a wait that has sprawled out to such a length you’ve almost forgotten that there is anything on the outside of this sterile waiting room, two things happen at once.  
The first; the storm weakens. Coughs. Sputters. Manages a few more cracks of thunder, then collapses in on itself, so that the windows clear a little bit. The roar of the wind dies down, as does the lashing of the rain, each of them to a much gentler tempo.  
The second; a doctor comes out. Or a nurse. You wouldn’t really know the difference.  
He does not have to look around, because you are the only ones waiting.  
Rus stands up “Are they alive?”  
“Yes. They’re both stable.  
‘stable’, so they really use that word in real life?  
“What’s the- the damage?”  
Cronus has to help you up, then slip his arms around your waist to keep you on your feet.  
The doctor or nurse glances you up and down “It’s not safe to let you see them right now. Besides, we have a family-only policy.”  
Rus’s face darkens, and the edge of his mouth quirks up in a bitter smile, but he does not retort “As long as we know they’re alright, then that’s fine for now.”  
“They will live, but be forewarned that their lives are going to be altered from here on out. What exactly is your relationship to the patients?”  
“Kurloz is my roommate,” you say quickly “And Latula lives in the female dorms at our school. We’re all old friends. Same small seaside town.”  
“Where they were injured?”  
That’s a pleasantly dry way of putting it “Yes.”  
Cronus squeezes your waist gently, trying to reassure you.  
“I can’t tell you very much about their condition since you’re not family, but they will survive.”  
“You said somethin’ ‘bout them bein’ altered.” says Cronus, his voice low and tired “W-what exactly does that mean?”  
The doctor or nurse’s face is pinched and uninterested “It means for your roommate that he will not be speaking again. Tell me, was there some kind of damage to his throat before the explosion? It looks as if something reached into his throat and clawed it to shreds.”  
It’s a good thing Cronus is holding you up, because now your legs really do give up the ghost. Cronus doesn’t even bat an eyelid. He just tightens his arms around you, keeping you drawn up to your full height to spare your pride. You hang onto his arms about you and just try your hardest not to imagine the bloody furrows that must be lining the sides of your roommate’s throat.  
Rus looks like he could use someone holding him up too “I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t there. If I can get service back on my phone, I’ll ask my brother.’  
“Your brother? The man that kept Ms Pyrope awake, yes?”  
“Boy.”  
“Boy?”  
“He’s fourteen years old.”  
The doctor or nurse blinks in thinly veiled surprise “Then you have a brother who is very mature for his age. Be sure to tell him that he did everything right. Where did he know to do that?”  
Rus shrugs “CSI?”  
“CSI.” repeats Cronus wearily. He hates that show so much.  
“At any rate, your friend’s throat and vocal cords have been destroyed. Where is his family right now?” the doctor or nurse looks around in a sharp disapproval “I’d guess they want to hear this too.”  
“Kurloz’s father is the police commissioner. He knows his son was involved in the accident, but he wasn’t able to get there in time to be airlifted with him. And Latula’s mother has been dead for years.”  
“Her next of kin?”  
Rus spreads his arms “You’re looking at us.”  
The doctor or the nurse furrows his brow “I’m not certain I can release her information to you.”  
“Let her decide when she wakes up,” you suggest “She will wake up, won’t she?”  
“Neither of them are comatose.”  
“Are they asleep?” presses Cronus “W-what’s stoppin’ us from seein’ ‘em now?”  
“I’m afraid that too much stimulation would be detrimental to her recovery. We’re about to put her to sleep at any rate. The only thing for you to do is go home right now, gentlemen, and come back tomorrow. You can ask a nurse about visiting hours on the way out.” the doctor or the nurse pauses “I hate to ask this so soon, but her insurance-”  
“It’s fine,” says Rus shortly “We can address that later, can’t we?”  
The doctor or the nurse nods reluctantly “Come back tomorrow.” He repeats.  
And with that, he’s heading back the way he came.  
It occurs to you to take your shoe off and nail him in the back of the head with it. But you refrain from doing so. If only to spare Cronus from watching you have a melt-down in the waiting room. Some of that stubborn, vestigial affection for Latula that clings on despite Cronus having firmly taken the centre stage in your romantic life. It demands for you to defend her in a way that is not entirely platonic. It supplies a protective, sort of mantling feeling that is also not entirely platonic. But, you figure, this is about as close as out of love with Latula as you’re going to get within this year.  
In a few more years, you won’t have the fierce desire to rush down the hall to her room and carry her out- not as anything more than a friend, should you ever have the misfortune to find yourself in a situation like this again.  
“Let’s go.” says Cronus softly “C’mon, Rus. Yer stayin’ at the school again, yeah? W-we can driv-ve ya home, an’ all come back here tomorrow-w as w-well.”  
Rus drops into a nearby chair suddenly, all of the tension leaving his body at once “It has occurred to me that everything I own is about a state away.”  
“W-we’re about the same size, Rus, you can borrow-w some of my stuff.”  
“And it seems that Loz’s bed is going to be empty for the foreseeable future, so you can have that too. Since your dorm room’s occupied again.”  
That’s the last thing you say for the remainder of the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just sneak another one in here, to apologise to the medical community? Yes, I am aware that you're not all butts. But I'm still mad at this one nurse who was a butt to me while I was prepping for surgery, so this kinda...revenge?  
> Nurse Sue, if you're reading this, professional attitude or not, you were an utter butt and made me fear death on the table during a minor operation. If that doesn't make you feel regret, then I hope it at least gives you a little pang of embarrassment while your guard is lowered, like, when you're in the shower.


	25. Her name is Feferi, and she's bleeding on the sand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay. More exposition. I may have lied when I said there was a plot.  
> And where the hell did Cronus go, anyway? Doesn't he live in this town anymore?

Your name is Sollux Captor, and God, does Eridan look good on his legs. Unsteady, sure. Unhappy, hell yeah, he’s as mad as the Queen of a freshly kicked bee-hive. But at least he’s walking now, with minimal pain. Now that he isn’t silenced by the weight of his bodily complaints, his mouth is freed up to fill up with every complaint he can possibly think of. He’s standing on the sand, his arms outstretched on either side of him to maintain his shaky balance. The foam of the waves stops just short of his feet, which look like any other person’s feet. If you didn’t know that he was a mermaid prince and those feet had been the twin ends of a fluke just days prior, then there would be no way to guess it.  
Eridan is trying to explain what Cronus has done to the house “See, he found this old pocket full of w-wards, so this w-way he can hide us and hide the house from other mers. Otherw-wise, they might find us. This place isn’t that far aw-way from the city…ugh, I sw-wear to Gog, these things. These are flesh straws competin’ w-with forces they cannot hope to defeat.”  
After a life-time spent under the waves, Eridan is having a hard time believing that gravity will really keep him pinned all the time. He keeps wanting to be suspended in the air- to float away, without a care, and swim through a few layers of cloud until the air is thin. You’ve tried to tell him that your atmosphere and his atmosphere work differently, but it doesn’t seem like the way the world should work, to him.  
“Wait a second, so…so how far away is the city?”  
Eridan points to the horizon and nearly knocks himself off balance. You have to catch his elbow to keep him from falling on his ass.   
“How many miles is that?”  
His face clouds “Miles…oh, right, that’s that measurement thing you use, right? That only America uses? The metric somethin’.”  
“The metric system. Hold on, they teach you about us down there?”  
“W-well w-why do you think Cro w-was up here in the first place?”  
“Uh…I don’t know. I guess…I haven’t had that much time to think about it. Wait, wait, one thing at a time. So, say you were an average sized fishing boat and you wanted to travel out to the city, like, directly over it. How long would that take?”  
Eridan mulls it over “Three and a half hours, I reckon.”  
A cold shiver travels up your spine “That’s not very far away.”  
He shakes his head, his face growing appropriately grim as well “Yeah, it ain’t. that’s w-why w-we gotta be the toughest in the w-water, you know-w? W-we liv-ve so close to you guys, but w-we don’t mov-ve and w-we gotta stay a secret too. Fuckin’ hard, I’m tellin’ ya, ta liv-ve where there are boats goin’ ov-ver yer head ev-very w-week an’ fishers scoopin’ yer steeds an’ yer friends outta the w-water ev-very chance they get.”  
Your head swims with the possibilities. Eridan hasn’t told you that much except in passing. You think that must be trained into him- he flinches, even now, as he realises he has given away yet another of what must be closely guarded secrets of his people. Or, at least, information he knows he shouldn’t be giving out so freely, although it is just to you.  
“I’m not gonna tell anyone.”  
He nods absently “Yeah. No, no I know-w.”  
“So…so does the city have a name?”  
“Not one you could pronounce.”  
“Try me.”  
Eridan keeps an utterly straight face as he makes a series of shrill, faintly musical and hair-raising chirps and trills that sound like the kinds of things dolphins say to each other, combined with a liberal dash of squeaky door-hinges.   
Your teeth gritted and your neck prickling, you force a smile “Yeah, ok. No. I can’t say that. But how come I can say your name? How come you know how to talk to me?”  
“Oh, uh. I don’t know-w if I can explain this to you.”  
A little deflated, you stuff your hands into your pockets “Trade secret, huh?”  
“No, it’s just really confusin’…so, like, I’m speakin’ yer language, right? But, like, not the way Cronus does. W-when he does English, he just does English straight out of his mouth. But I’m speakin’, an’ it’s changin’ in my mouth into yer language. I’m just makin’ all the right movements w-with my mouth. You get it?”  
“No. Frankly, I don’t understand any of your bullshit magic stuff.”  
He cracks a grin “Lemme jus’ say this, it w-wouldn’t matter if you w-were speakin’ Hindi or Mandarin, I’d still understand you. An’ you’d understand me fine.”  
You shrug “As long as we can talk.”  
“It’s- it’s my accent, yeah? You can hear that loud an’ clear. That’s the only thing. Mers all got weird w-wav-vy accents w-when w-we talk.”  
“I like it.”  
He cocks a slim eyebrow “Huh. Really?”  
“Really.”  
A couple of minutes pass in a comfortable silence. Eridan tugs at his clothes a little- some simple, loose stuff he borrowed from Cronus. A long-sleeved T-shirt because he isn’t used to not being wet and still wants the feeling of something on his skin at all times. A pair of jeans to cover up the scars that travel all the way up between his legs, and which you cannot stop thinking about no matter how hard you tell yourself that you should. Now that you think about it, aside from whatever kind of decorations his people wear (earrings- he has earrings), he’s probably been naked his entire life, hasn’t he?  
Now, there’s a thought that’s going to keep you up tonight.  
“Do you smell that?”  
“Smell what?”  
Cautiously, Eridan edges forward to the water. Up to this point he seemed terrified that his legs would meld again into a tail the second he touched it, but now, he creeps in and stands there, with the foam making anklets, and takes a deep breath of air. Immediately, his face crumples.  
“I smell blood.”  
“What- what kind of blood?”  
“My kind of blood.”  
“Mers?”  
He turns to you, his eyes dark and sad “Must be from the battle…I guess there…there’s dead bodies w-washin’ up here. W-we’re gonna hafta take care of that.”  
Your stomach turns to knots and flips a few times at the thought of handling corpses- alien corpses, now that you think about it “Should we get Cronus?”  
Eridan shakes his head “Someone might find the dead body before we do. Listen, Sol, I know-w it’s a sucky thin’ to ask, but I can definitely smell a dead body here. Too much blood in the water for it to be…to be…” he stops, and the colour drains from his face as if being sucked away by a straw.  
“Eridan?” you approach slowly and cautiously, then dash to catch him as his legs try to give out on him.  
Through some miracle, you manage to keep him on his feet. His eyes are glazed and fixed in the distance, around the headland where the two of you used to cavort and play as children. He looks physically sick. More than that. Mortally terrified.  
“It’s Vriska.”  
“Vriska?” you repeat the word, and the taste is of a name. Someone he cares for.  
“Oh, Gog.”  
He plants his face in your shoulder. For a moment, you think he’s going to dissolve into tears in your arms. Instead, he collects himself quickly. His shoulders are squared and his face is cold, and as devoid of emotion as he can make it. Of course. You had forgotten that he will be a warrior by now, in his culture. Hell, he’s probably killed a few people too.   
“Vriska is an old friend. Now-w we definitely hav-ve to find her. She deserv-ves better than lyin’ on the beach, all bloated and floated…Gog, if the crabs hav-ve her by now.” he tugs urgently on your elbow “Come on, we hav-ve to find her. The smell’s old, an’ it’s far. You might hav-ve to help me w-walk.”

Sollux Captor: be Karkat Vantas =========>  
Karkat Vantas: soothe the screaming mermaid ============>

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you feel kind of gratified by the fact that the mermaid thing is screaming in pain, as oppose to in horror. She seems to understand that she is among friends by now. The first few seconds of consciousness, she was wild with panic and tried to take Equius’s face off with some very, very, fucking sharp nails. He caught her wrist easily and pinned it- which took some actual effort, going by the way his arm trembled and the muscles bulged like they were gonna pop out of his taut skin- and the others offered small comforts while the mermaid’s breathing hitched and her eyes watered.  
She’s holding Gamzee’s hand. You don’t know why Gamzee thought it was a gesture that the mermaid would understand, the comfort, the friendliness behind offering a couple of phalanges to squeeze, but she has hands too and she seems to know the drill with hands-holding. She’s squeezing his hand. His knuckles are white and you can tell it hurts, but Gamzee isn’t complaining.  
For their part, Nepeta and Aradia are staying calm. Nepeta has yet to sacrifice her shirt, which is good. There are already two bare chests around here (Aradia might as well be bare, even with her bra on) and you don’t know if your ingrained Catholic sensibilities can handle anymore. You’ll talk yourself through the utter lack of shame to the female body and why you should be the one feeling shame for sexualising what are essentially milk-bags later on, when you’ve got the space in your head.  
You’re also going to ask what you have a feeling will become a very important question for you: why do fishes even have boobs? But all, again, later.  
For now, you’re just focussed on getting her to talk.  
Yes, she can talk, by some weird twist of logic, luck and science, she speaks English.  
It is official. She can English.  
Her accent is strange, though. She sounds foreign, definitely, and alien in the way no accent has ever sounded before.  
“Chasing me…” she manages, her voice torn with pain “Chasing me….to here. Where is it?”  
Equius still has her situated in his lap and propped up against his chest. You’re all too afraid to move her at the moment. Nepeta, going by the look on her face, is calling in every scrap of medical knowledge she has ever gleaned from Grey’s Anatomy. She’s not going to let this mermaid die, which is comforting. If Nepeta doesn’t want something to happen, then it’s generally not going to happen. Aradia just looks so fucking excited you want to smack her.  
“Can you tell me what was chasing you?” you ask, much more calmly than you feel.  
“It’s dead,” she says shortly, and a bubble of freakishly pink blood collects in the corner of her mouth “But…two more. Somewhere.”  
Nepeta reaches forward carefully, as she would reach for a wounded animal, and dabs the blood away on her fingertips “Is there anything you can tell us to help us help you? How do we stop the blood?”  
Surprisingly, the mermaid lets out a bitter laugh. The same laugh you’ve heard out of your father’s mouth a hundred times, usually when you’re getting off the phone to Kankri.  
“No need. I’ll heal. I just need…the water…the quiet.”  
“The headland.” suggests Gamzee “Ain’t that far. We can carry her.”  
“Alright.”  
Quickly, you stand and scan the beach. The headland is not very far, but neither is the town at your back. Time will be of the essence, and speed too. You’re not sure how you’re going to get a mermaid across open beach without anyone noticing, but no one has noticed the commotion so far.  
“Alright,” you say, business-like “We need to tie something around her waist to keep her blood from getting in the sand or the water.”  
With his free hand, Gamzee offers the jacket that was tied around his waist.  
“Why are you - it’s 90 degrees today, Gamzee.”  
He shrugs “Don’t question it, bro, just use it.”  
And, carefully, you oblige. The mermaid gnashes teeth like a shark’s and digs her free hand deep into the sand. Equius digs it up out of the sand and lets her clasp at his curled fist, while Gamzee’s knuckles pop in her other hand. You have to arch her up, gently, you think, but she hisses in pain.  
“Sorry.” you mutter.  
She shakes her head just slightly “Worse. Had worse.”  
You can’t imagine how much worse she could have than a hole so deep in her side you can see her ribs, but hey, whatever she says.   
When you’re done, she goes slack on the floor and lets out a deep, shuddering sigh of pain. Taking advantage of how limp she is, Equius stands and arranges her in his arms like they’re fresh from the church and he’s about to carry her into their new house. She wraps an arm around his shoulder and settles with her chin back, pointed to the sky. Her eyes are glazed in pain.  
Nepeta falls in step with Equius. You try to do the same, but your legs are so short you kind of end up having to trot to match their pace.  
“What’s your name?” asks Nepeta “You have one, right?”  
The mermaid nods weakly “Yeah.”  
“What is it, then? I’m Nepeta.”  
The mermaid considers her answer for a long time, before she gives it “Feferi.”  
“Fairy?” you repeat.  
“Feferi.”  
“Oh. Uh, I’m Karkat. That’s Gamzee, that’s Aradia, and that column of sinew that’s carrying you is fondly referred to as Equius, but you should hear what they call him in the stre-”  
Nepeta cuts across you “Do you know what caused the storm? Sorry to, like, jump down your throat, but it’s just that you’re clearly something special, and that rain was something scary. So, like, excuse me if I make what’s kind of an obvious correlation, here.”  
Aradia nudges her in the side “Rude, ‘Peta.” But she, of course, doesn’t look the slightest bit offended.  
Neither does the mermaid. Feferi. Just very, very tired.  
“My mother.”   
And that’s all she says for a long time.

Karkat Vantas: be John =========>  
John: lose your shit =========>

Yes, that’s you. John. John Egbert, specifically, which is a weird name for mers, but then again John is the second most common name right after Karkat, so who cares?  
And no, you’re doing your utmost, your absolute best not to throw yourself at Bro Strider’s throat in an epic display of losing your shit. Of doing an absolutely breath-takingly beautiful, graceful and acrobatic dive off the metaphorical sea-shelf, or, as humans would put it, off the handle. Probably the only reason your teeth aren’t embedded in the delicate flesh of Bro’s gills is because you have a lot of respect for this guy. He almost raised you, after all. Your father had to go and die what they said was a tragic hunting accident, but what you suspect was more funny than it was heart-breaking because the members of the hunting party that brought back what little remained of his spear were giggling when they handed it over.   
And Bro’s been there ever since. Bro and Vriska. And now that Vriska’s dead, you’re not really over-eager to rob yourself of your only other role model.  
Dave is holding you down, sort of. He put an arm around your shoulders the moment he became certain you weren’t going to head-butt him for taking you away from Vriska’s ravaged corpse. If not for the fact that your best friend/boss is dead and you don’t want to lose the other boss-friend-thing, and for the fact that Dave’s arm has stayed firm around your shoulders, yeah, you would totally be all over Bro’s throat with teeth right now.  
He makes a supreme effort not to notice you attempting to boil the water with just a sheer force of willpower as he talks. There are four of you in the tent now, and a whole host of assholes outside the entrance who think they’re being very sneaky and quiet, but whose silhouettes are obvious on the outsides of the walls. You don’t know how much they can hear, but they’re probably getting far more out of it than you can.  
The terms that Bro and the woman, Porrim, are throwing around are as mysterious and unnerving as her sudden appearance with what little of Vriska she could salvage was.  
“We’re going with them.” mutters Dave.  
Already, he understands what you’re going to do. Or rather, what you’re going to claim. Revenge, if you can get it. If not, you’re just going to wreak as much carnage and bloodshed and havoc as you can manage against the other side, until you die or are forced away from the battlefield permanently by Bro.   
“You better believe we are.” is all you want to say to him.  
You’re still kind of mad. Not that mad, but mad enough that you might still pop him in the jaw if you have to spend much time thinking about how much he has essentially screwed you over.  
Meanwhile, Bro and the woman, Porrim, are busily chatting away.  
Bro is the one talking “…Meenah has been doing this for about five seasons, as far as we can tell. The Condesce entrusted her with the key to the cell, which, by the way, should stay in this room. It was a bold move by him to gain her trust, but unfortunately, she didn’t recognise it as that. Just as an opportunity.”  
Porrim scowls “Damn. Well, that would explain the rain. She was transporting the ingredients for the spell to her, wasn’t she?”  
“One thing we’re still uncertain on is how she got the final ingredient to her. You know what that is- a land pounder’s tongue.”  
“I would say that she must have lured one of them into the water from a nearby town…come to think of it…hmm. Oh.”  
Something shifts in Porrim’s face. If pushers made a noise when they broke, that noise would be bouncing off the walls of the tent and make the others outside jump in shock. Bro puts a hand on her shoulder.  
“Someone you know?” he asks, gently, but firmly.  
“Two someones, I think. I have a friend who- he was on the Dockside, at the town, you know, the one that’s just that way,” she waves her hand in a vague direction, dropping her voice so low that only you, Dave and Bro can hear it “Where Maryam stashed her baby boy.”  
A flicker of recognition, accompanied by fear, flits across Bro’s face “Huh.” Is all he says “That’s interesting.”  
“Anyway, he and another friend of mine were caught in an explosion there. And one of these friends, they weren’t just another land-pounder. It was Latula Pyrope.”  
This time, Bro allows himself to look shocked and disgusted “She’s still alive?”  
Porrim nods “We didn’t talk that much about life underwater, but she’s still plodding along. She lost some things in that accident, but I would say now that it wasn’t an accident. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was another mer, claiming the last ingredient. Meenah…where- where’s Terezi these days?”  
Dave perks up at the mention of his moirail. Before he can stop himself, he’s upright and ready to defend her “She’s here. Why?”  
Both of them turn to him. You kind of wither, under the force of those glares, but Dave is drunk in platonic love with this mer and you know how strong that can be. It keeps him brave and indignant.  
“Hold on, just because it was Terezi’s land-pounding sister that got attacked and damaged and whatever, you think it was her? That she’s been collaborating with evil and ready to unleash the gog-damned Sea Witch on us the entire time? No, she’s not like that. She’s a vengeance-obsessed weirdo, but she’s not a genocidal maniac.”  
Bro frowns at him, with the air of a mer who has heard all of this before “Dave, no one is accusing your moirail of anything.”  
“Uh, yeah, you are. Like, that is literally what you are doing right now. Accusation.”  
Porrim chips in “The sooner we can clear her of suspicion, the sooner you can rest easy. Where is she, right now?”  
“Hold on, hold on,” Dave folds his arms, and with his arm gone from your shoulders, you feel yourself slip just a little bit “I want to know why exactly you think that Terezi has it in her to condemn her entire species- her entire world, to certain death.”  
Bro gives him a frank look “David, you and I both know she is capable of that and more, with the right convictions.”  
“No. I’m not going to accept that.” he looks to you “John, can you back me up here?”  
Wouldn’t it be a swift and sweet revenge on him if you put his moirail at risk too? If you left her in the lurch- the closest you can ever get to forcing him to leave her, shell-beast gnawed and exposed to the elements…should you do it?  
“She wouldn’t do that. Terezi is weird, but that doesn’t mean she’s evil. Or dumb. She wants to change the world with her- her justice and her willpower, and there won’t be much of a world to save if the Sea Witch is in it again. Up to her old tricks.”  
Bro’s face stays stubbornly blank. You’re not used to seeing emotion on it at all, in the first place, so you find it kind of comforting that he barely reacts to what you have said. But Dave, he’s had a long day. A long couple of days- building up to a long week, and he’s just too tired not to look over his shoulder with this little, grateful smile that makes you so glad you didn’t give them a reason to suspect Terezi. They’ve got no real reason to suspect her.  
Dave’s moirail is acerbic, abrasive, self-righteous and obnoxious. But so is yours. Was yours.  
People like that can be good people too.  
“I knew her.” Says Porrim suddenly “Your pale partner. I knew her when she was younger.”  
You’re not sure what she’s getting at “She was amazing.”  
“She was a terror when I knew her. And I suspect she never lost that. I suspect she was a terror to the enemy as well.”  
Your throat grows thick and your eyes prick with tears you’re determined not to spill.   
“Listen, whatever you’re doing, I’m coming with you.”  
“Me too.” says Dave, and it is not an offer “Terezi is coming too…not just to prove that she’s innocent of whatever the fuck you think it even is that she did, but…she’s smart, you know? She knows what she’s doing.”  
“That’s fine by me.” says Porrim “But don’t tell your brothers, or I’m going to have more Strider than I know how to handle.”  
You’re kind of surprised that Bro hasn’t told her no. If it were Dirk instead of him, Dirk would be screaming and clutching the two of you to his chest.  
“You guys don’t even want to know what you’re getting into?” he asks “This isn’t gonna be easy.”  
“Fuck it.” you say “I’m not here because things are easy. I’m here because Vriska is dead and a whole lot of other mers are too and it’s gonna keep happening unless we stop it.”  
“We already survived one apocalypse. Two? Feh, bring it the hell on. I’m so ready.” adds Dave, somewhat uncertainly.   
Dirk would definitely be losing his shit right now. This, however, is not Dirk. This is Bro, and Bro’s the cool guardian.  
He waves dismissively “Fine.”  
“Good.” you get up “Before we go, I have some…some remains I need to take care of.”


	26. Two halves of the same battle, and how they begin

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you don’t really know what to do right now.  
Apart from enjoy this break. Yes, breaks are very good, very, very relaxing and nice, even though you’re covered in pink blood and the mermaid is still writhing in pain. You’re all sprawled out on the sand, in various stages of being caked in pink blood, and trying to think of what to do next. Cronus’s house isn’t that far away from here, but Feferi needs to breathe.  
She doesn’t want you guys to stop moving her, and she keeps telling Equius this.  
“They’ll find me,” she insists “They’ll krill you.”  
It has taken Equius and the rest of you a few tries to translate what she means. She seems to be able to speak English fairly well for no explicable reason, which is totally fine with you, but has replaced some of her words with sea-style puns. It’s hard to take her seriously, despite her grim attitude and the steel in her eyes, when she’s replacing ‘kill’ with a whale’s favourite food.   
She is propped up in Nepeta’s lap, carefully arranged so that she is in the shade of the headland and far from the water which scares her now. You wonder if it’s your imagination, or if her skin does indeed seem a little more parched than it was initially. As if being away from the water is drying her out. That makes all kinds of sense- she’s a mermaid, for fuck’s sake, and they’re kind of defined by the fact that they have to stick to the water or risk death.   
“They can’t kri- uh, kill us, if we don’t let them.” says Aradia cheerfully “And I don’t intend to cark it any time soon.”  
“Aradia, please, don’t agitate her.” says Equius.  
He is on his feet again and peering around the edge of the stone wall of the cove that the headland creates. He looks like he was attacked by a vicious swarm of fairies- not only is he drenched from head to foot in pink, but there’s some kind of crystallisation effect going on, so his skin glows faintly wherever the blood has seeped in.   
Big pink disco ball, you’re thinking, and it’s making you want to giggle, or scream, like a Bond-Girl just begging to be slapped out of her mounting hysteria.  
Scratch that. Bond-Girls are stupid. Two-dimensional sex objects that can fire guns.  
Blech. You’d rather be the guy that dies first- he’s usually brown, and you’re brown by ethnicity (even though you got screwed over in the melatonin department) and those guys are usually the funniest anyway.  
“We need to get her inside,” says Nepeta for about the fifth time “She’s not doing so well.”  
At this, the mermaid tilts her head up just the slightest bit and catches sight of what her wounds have been doing since they hit the sun. Rims of dried blood, in a crust that’s flaking off into the sand and gets on everyone’s hands whenever they touch her or the sand beside her. Swamps of blood coming out of her. Frankly, you don’t understand how she is still alive, with the amount of blood that has been cheerfully vacating her arteries and veins. Her species must be built a little better than humans.  
Species. Man this is a weird day.  
“Are we good, Eq?” you ask.  
He nods uncertainly, which doesn’t inspire much confidence.  
“Come on Equius, with some feeling. Give me a cheer. Make me believe in you. Make me want to bring the trophy home to -”  
“There’s someone coming,” his face is a charming mixture of grim and confused that makes him look like he was just slapped across it with something strange “It’s Sol.”  
“Sol?” you brighten a little. Ok, so Sol is just as dumb and assholish as the rest of you, but it couldn’t hurt to have one more asshole helping things along.  
Equius retreats behind the rock shelf, though, instead of running out to meet your friend “There’s someone else with him.”  
“Who?”  
Gamzee perks up in surprise “Sol ain’t got no other friends but us, do he?”  
The mermaid groans involuntarily. Swearing, Nepeta claps her hands over one of the gashes just as a fresh spurt of blood begins. Blood gushes through her fingers. Nepeta’s skin starts to steam and quickly grows chapped from the cold of the blood.   
Gamzee promptly takes off his shirt and passes it over to her, so she can ball it up and stuff it over the wound. How many more shirts are going to be lost in the attempt to save this weirdo, you have to wonder?  
And who the hell could Sol be with right now? Gamzee’s right when he said that Sol doesn’t have any friends outside of this cove. None of you do.  
You get up “I’ll see who it is. No, sit your ass down, Eq, you’re covered in pink. Looks like some kind of drunken pixie mob threw up on you.”  
While Equius brushes himself off, an exercise in futility and self-consciousness, you round the corner of the cove and stare.  
Yep, that’s Sol.  
You poke your head around the cove to report this “It’s Sol.”  
And someone else, leaning very heavily on him for support, as if he’s not good at using his legs yet.  
This one takes a little more thought. A bit of staring, a bit of your neurons firing in a desperate attempt to place the stranger’s familiar face, but you get it.  
And you report what you get too “Accompanied by what appears to be a smaller version of Cronus Vantas.”  
Still feels weird to think that your surname is his too, now.  
“Cronus?” gurgles Feferi.  
All eyes are on her. Hers are wide with shock and pain.  
“Cronus?” she repeats, trying to make you understand “Cronus is…Cronus is dead.”  
“No, he’s not,” you snap “He’s perfectly fine, thanks. Possibly a widower, but- are we even talking about the same fucking Cronus?”  
She doesn’t respond.  
Nepeta cradles her face in her hands, and delicately peels back an eyelid with her thumb “She went under.”  
“Shit,” Gamzee shifts forward in the sand “Wake her up, wake her the fuck up or she ain’t gone come back.”  
While they set about dragging her back into consciousness with a series of slaps, pinches and sweet nothings, you scoot around the edge of the cove and jump to the beach a short drop below. Your head swims. It doesn’t get better, as Sol notices you and shoves the boy behind him. The boy almost goes down, but he manages to stay up and peer over Sol’s shoulder at the new threat.  
“IT’S KARKAT YOU JUMPY BUTT-HOLE! GET THE FUCK OVER HERE!”  
Sol slackens and says to the boy, faintly “It’s fine! They’re my friends. Remember, I told you-”  
The boy nods shortly. His mouth moves, but the sound is too soft to be carried over to you. From the look on his face? You don’t know if you actually want to know what he’s saying.  
But as they draw closer, you can hear it.  
“…smell her blood…”  
Things click.   
“You’re one of them too?”   
The boy looks at you. A myriad of emotions, possible reactions and retorts flit across his face. Sol stands off to the side. He’s caught between being dumb-founded and poised to spring- to fight. Who the fuck is this guy, that he’s poised to fight you for him?  
“I’m a mer.” says the guy “Why do I smell-”  
“Feferi on me? Because she’s bleeding out over here. Move fast.”

 

Your name is Dave Strider and you’re beginning to regret your decision.  
Not to follow John Egbert and Porrim Maryam into certain death, against the wishes of one of your only remaining family members and with deaf ears to the same family member’s protestations. Not to take on what is probably the dumbest, most overt suicide mission in the history of missions that entail a ridiculously extreme risk of death.   
Not even because you have to carry this dumb spear. No one who ever wanted to make an impression in battel carried a big twig that they could only use once in long-distance battle, that’s what you think.  
No, the decision you’re regretting is choosing not to stop yourself from falling in red-love with John Egbert. It would have been simple enough. You could have distracted yourself, probably, in the arms of some other equally hot (ha, like he has equals) and funny and stupid mer and taught yourself to love them and forget about John for long enough that, if you ever felt the need to return to being in love with him, he would have lost what made him attractive in the first place.  
Coulda. Woulda. Shoulda.  
Didn’t.  
Fighting for life, now, and for the lives of the larger mer population. Because if there’s one thing standing directly in the way of the Sea Witch right now, you’re it. You, John, deep in grief and gnashing his goofy teeth in anticipation of getting to avenge that grief. Mysterious long-lost hero, daughter of other, older, more mysterious long-lost hero of your people.  
Fun, fun, fun.  
Gog, you wish Terezi was here. In the end, you couldn’t find her, which didn’t bode well for the passionate defence that you had set up for her. But folks were about as understanding as they could be. Had to be. You’re the future Condesce’s body-guard, and the spawn of the current one’s right-hand mer, so they have to give you some wriggle-room. And it is a generally accepted fact that your moirail is fucking weird, so they had to acknowledge that she was in all likelihood sketching battle-plans on a rock somewhere in the camp and muttering to herself about maritime law under her blood-scented breath.  
So here you are.  
You have already listed the players in this game of certain death.  
The three of you are hiding somewhere, right now.  
Underneath a ledge of rock. Squeezed in against each other, tucked double so not even the slightest hint of fin can waft out in the currents and give away your position. You may hate spears with a violent passion, but that Golem looming overhead had better believe that you’re going to use that spear like an extension of your arm, if it makes a grab for you.  
“The good thing is,” Porrim is muttering “They can’t hear us very well. They can only hear us moving, since their sight is based on that as well. The sense of smell is what we really have to worry about.”  
John takes an experimental taste of the water “All I can smell is blood and fire.”  
She nods almost imperceptibly “That’s why we have to act now, while the scents are strong enough to mask us. The old blood, the fire. We have to use it while we can.”  
The Golem is standing guard on a small outcropping of coral and rock that is clinging to the side of a larger cliff. You recognise this as the flank of one of the trenches that leads to home. If you swam a little further down and followed the curvature of the trench, you would arrive at what are now the gutted, bloodied remains of your home. If you had two days to use up.  
Which you don’t, so Porrim is leading you guys on what she said was a “shortcut to the city.” When you saw where she was taking you, you heartily disagreed and corrected her: “shortcut to certain death with extra pain and a side of dismemberment”.  
John managed to shut you up. Pesky thing, being in love.   
“So now that we’re here…how do we get over there?”  
You nod towards the shortcut in question. The shortcut is, in fact, a narrow bottle-neck of a tunnel which your guardians and various seniors have been warning you against nearing since you were old enough to understand the concept of death. It is stuffed with all manner of monsters, the least of which are sting-beasts that can kill mers with a dose of venom in a few seconds flat. You’re not sure what the gnarliest thing they’ve got in there is, but you suspect it might be a giant slitherbeast. It is the only thing that can fit into the narrow passage, but still has teeth like knives.  
As of now, the short-cut is guarded. Not heavily, if two Golems on either side plus the one overhead can be considered to be not heavy. On the plus side, you can tell their orcas aren’t going to last much longer. The word orca- a word that dropped into the mer vernacular after hearing it spoken on fishing boats in reference to the black-white fluke-beasts- is enough to send a shiver up the spine of all mers. The stories they tell about what a pod of those things can and will eagerly due to lone mers.   
It would be enough to make anyone want to foul the water which is what you really want to do.  
Porrim must be reading your pan, because she repeats her orders on the orcas “We wait until they run out of air. They’ll all go to the surface at once. Strength in numbers. When we see them up there, we charge their masters, ok?”  
John’s eyes have become steely with fear and determination “Fine by me.”  
You helped him sink Vriska. Came back from hunting for Terezi with plenty of time to spare. The typical funeral ceremony is long, with a wake just in case the corpse decides to, you know, wake up and demand to know why it’s about to be sunk. But it was obvious that there was no chance of Vriska coming back for one more go at life. You still have no idea where her bottom half is. Most likely, it’s been eaten by one of the Golems’ tamed orcas, or by some other roving scavenger.  
It was simple, quick, and private.  
Only you and John were there to wrap her up in the shroud, to tie the stones to her, and then to drop her into the blackness at the edge of a drop-off. She’ll be close to the bottom by now. Joining the dust where hers and your ancestors have been sunk into to rot and feed what lives underneath for cycles that cannot be counted.  
It is a comforting thought, actually. At least she gets to be sunk with some dignity, unlike scores of your fellows over the last few, horrible days.  
“There they go.” says John.  
You watch with dread as the orcas rise to the surface slowly. The Golems show no signs of discomfort, now that their bulky, misshapen bodies are forced to stay floating of their own accord. Each one is fitted with a simple set of fits that extend out from their backs, like dorsal fins on a toothbeast, and a single tail with a fluke of varying size. They’re such an ugly approximation of the shape of your kind that it makes you want to puke.  
The orca overhead swims off after its companions. It doesn’t notice the three mers huddled into the crevice underneath the ledge.   
You wish it would, kinda.   
You take a deep breath, enjoying the weird sensation of having your gills so far open. The shadows of the orcas recede into the blanket of white light that lies near the surface.   
You look to Porrim for permission. She nods. She slips out from under the ledge and starts swimming over, casual as you like, to the hole between the Golems. John grabs your arm and follows her. Your skin tingles unpleasantly where he is touching you (nothing new), and your pusher is going through several extraordinarily acrobatic motions in a spirited attempt to climb into your throat and choke you.   
You can’t stop yourself from looking behind you. Taking in the sight of the hulk of the Golem. Staring at it as it stares back at you.  
Thinking out loud: “Dirk was right. I’m gonna get killed out here.”  
“I left him at the camp for a reason,” mutters Porrim up ahead “And it’s not because you two are smaller and faster.”  
That’s a mystery to crack later. For now, you just swim.  
The Golems aren’t expecting a direct charge. Something about a Light Brigade. When the Condesce’s son went on land, he came back full of stories to terrify you and Eridan with and one of them had something about a glowing brigade. Whatever that means.  
But, for some reason, you’re thinking of that brigade, and their charge.  
The first Golem that was swimming right over you starts off in hot pursuit. In your free-hand, you clutch your spear, resolving not to use it until you’re desperate. At the same time the other two are converging on you. They come with their arms out, thinking that it’ll be easy to grab you and twist you in half.  
Well, you’ll be glad to dissuade them of that notion.  
Porrim beats you to it. All at once, she puts on a burst of speed and drops beneath you and John, pumping backwards. While the Golem behind you is busy trying to snag the tip of your tail, Porrim drives her elbow into its stomach from the bottom. This does little in the way of damage, but it gets it to look down at her and open its jaw. She grabs the bottom half of the jaw, hooking her fingers in the stone lip, and wrenches it off.  
In front of you, John ducks under a pair of hands. The Golems are quick to react, but even though John’s dragging you he manages to be faster. Fuelled by fear and anger- there are tears trailing from his eyes, the poor bastard. He knows the kind of teeth that made those marks on Vriska’s waist, and there are several mouths full of them far above, opening and closing in the salty air as their owners soak up the oxygen.  
You get past the first Golem, only to run straight into the second. Like, literally. It hid behind the other one’s shadow on purpose so you wouldn’t realise your mistake until it has started to squeeze- and, Gog, it’s squeezing hard. You manage to slip out of John’s grasp at the last second, freeing him from the same mistake.  
John lets out a wordless shout of anger and, as the Golem closes a hand around your chest and another around your tail, preparing to constrict and tear, he throws himself into its face. This is about as effective as sneezing at it. However, the good thing about a sneeze is that they make their victims pause.  
The Golem pauses. A pause is all the time Porrim needs. The next thing you know, the other Golem bashes head-long into the one that has you. Porrim has somehow lead it into chasing her until it chased her right into its fellow. You’re almost crushed between them, but Porrim snatches you out of the way just in time. Gathering you up in her arms, she pumps upwards, affording a brilliant view of the shattering collision that takes place once the two Golems hit.  
John is already waiting in the mouth of the hole.  
“Come on!” he calls.  
Porrim doesn’t bother to let you go. She speeds over, still carrying you, and throws herself into the hole. You realise that the first Golem was only disabled for a moment and it’s coming back for more. It follows you to the hole. John has the good sense to back into its depths. Porrim moves so fast you feel like your face is about to be ripped off.  
You hurtle into the dim hole. A second later, a rocky fist closes behind you. Porrim whirls around and glares at the Golem’s groping hand. Thank Gog, the thing is far too big to even think about squeezing half of its body in after you. You still have your spear, since it never really occurred to you to drop it during the ordeal, so you stab it as hard as you can in between two fingers.  
Apparently, spears are effective on stone. The hand wrenches back quickly.  
“Why did that work?” you ask yourself, as Porrim draws you deeper into the dark throat.  
“Here we go, boys,” she says just before the darkness becomes complete “Now it gets scary.”


	27. Story time

Your name is Cronus Vantas, and this has been one of the weirdest days of your life.  
Second to none, except for maybe the day you left your under-water home for what you had hoped was going to be the final time. It was odd to see the familiar settings and the faces you loved, to consider the one you were picking above all else, who was pacing somewhere you couldn’t reach him, and to just let yourself think how you were never going to see this place, just over and over again.  
That was a weird day.  
The weirdest.  
Except, now, Eridan, Sol, Karkat and the rest of the kids brought Feferi in through the back-door and started screaming for your help, as they stretched her out on the floor and Sol made a mad dash for the first-aid kit he knew you kept in the kitchen cabinet. You stood there with your jaw unhinged and your shirt unbuttoned.  
For some reason, the detail you chose to zero in was not Feferi, how much she had grown, how much she had bled, but how much of that blood was on Equius Zahhak. You like Equius. Cute kid, built like a tank, heart of gold and all that stuff, if you can get past the unpleasant outer-layers. He was being very caring and careful with Feferi, the way he cradled her in his lap and kept his hands pressed over the blood-chugging wound. He was also completely drenched in pink, sparkly pink at that, so he kind of looked like he’d just escaped a violent mugging at the hands of a gang of brutal fairies.  
You started to laugh.  
“Shit, he’s lost it!” announced Karkat, who seemed to be kind of in charge. At least, the rest of the kids were looking to him, and you don’t think it was just because he was hopping to his feet and shouting “Ok, ok, we need someone who knows mers and has their fucking head screwed on at the appropriate angle for maximum cerebral function! Volunteers? Nominations? Ideas, anyone?”  
Eridan was slow to catch up “There’s a salt-w-water pond downstairs. Get her there. She needs the w-water.”   
With Eridan acting as a guide, Eq took Feferi downstairs.  
The other kids followed, and Sol bolted after them with the medical kit. It finally occurred to you that they were going to need your help, because none of them had substantial or useful medical knowledge, when it came to saving lives. Let alone saving the life of an entirely different species.  
So down you went, too.  
The job was not easy, but mercifully, it was quick. Your skills were kind of rusty and made even more clumsy by the presence of a bunch of adolescents, sparkling with pink glitter-blood (the royal colour- somehow managing to look noble even when smudged across Aradia’s nose), breathing down your neck and making tiny noises of disgust at the strange innards you were attempting to pack back inside.  
Your favourite is still the moment when Gamzee peered over your shoulder, saw the pouch of one of Feferi’s swim-bladders close to her freakishly large lungs and let out a low whistle “I once sneezed somethin’ mighty that looked like that.”  
Meanwhile, Eridan’s pale has been showing. He’s been getting his pale feelings all over this girl; you can see it like a slime, and it’s kind of grossing you out, just how fucking, gog-damned, down-right pale they are being right now. Makes you want to double up and vomit into the pond, but that would mean polluting Feferi’s life-support system. You can’t even remember the last time you had anything resembling a pale inclination. Living with the humans has smothered your quadrant-instincts, to the point where you barely give them any thought anymore.  
Probably, the last mer you had the slightest pale interest in was your body-guard. The people in your family have a long, illustrious and altogether unfortunate history of falling into the pale quadrant for their body-guards. Yours and Dirk’s father did it, you were probably getting close to it, and you were sure that Dave was going to do it too, even though he was only young when you knew him and still at the stage where he resented Eridan’s mere existence. You wonder vaguely if he’s still with that psychotic blind mer that he fell in with during the last year you knew him.  
Cute couple, for the people who could over-look the respective currents of insanity and eccentricity that the two were feeding for each other.   
Now, things are a little easier.  
The gaping hole in Feferi has been plugged up. Eridan sits beside her, not in the pond, though, possibly because he’s afraid she might notice the legs that she has somehow completely missed up to this point. He doesn’t want to give her any kind of sensory overloads while she’s still practically too messed up to know where she is or what has happened to her town. She hasn’t even recognised you yet, and you have to wonder if she’s asked for you at all.  
“No, you’re still glittery.”  
Sat in front the couch, Equius groans. He has been sitting between Nepeta’s scraped knees for the better part of half an hour as she combs through his hair with a wet brush. He looks even more like a Disney Princess, with that fantastic hair than he normally does, thanks to the small crystals of salt that are caught in his hair and make it look like a blanket of black diamonds is draped around his shoulders.   
“Cronus, is this going to come out?”  
You’re slumped in a deep, sagging armchair opposite him- Kankri’s reading chair. He loves this chair. He probably wouldn’t like you getting blood-stains on the upholstery, or sitting in at such an angle that your chin and knees are level. If your husband were here to do his nagging bit, he’d be telling you of the horrors that you’re doing for your spine.  
“Sure, kid,” you say, dull and disinterested as you can be. You’re doing your best not to engage with the array of tired, bloody teenagers scattered around your living room. With Kankri gone, right now, everything is just a little too raw, too exposed. If you were a robot, you’d be walking around with every wire exposed. One of these kids pokes the wrong spot and you’ll have a melt-down, which you’re not going to do in front of a bunch of kids, because if somebody’s gonna be the adult of the situation it might as well be the actual fucking adult.  
Gamzee sits up. He was lying underneath the coffee table, for some reason, so it startles you to have him rise up suddenly, like a corpse hefting itself out of a concealed coffin “Hey, Cronus?”  
“Hey, Gamzee.”  
“What now?”  
“We sit around, I guess.”  
“So…so we just sit here, yeah, while the fish-sis and Eridan are gettin’ their heal on, downstairs,” he nods towards the passage that leads to the salt-water pond “An’ then what?”  
“And then we sit some more.”  
He cocks a slim eyebrow, looking remarkably like his father (or as Kankri reports it, his nephew) “Sittin’ some more. That’s gonna help us get rid ‘a the bad shit tryin’ fer us, how?”  
“It won’t.”  
Karkat rises from the floor too. He was lying face-down and prone at your feet, which was kind of nice. Reminds you of when Girl sits like that, except she doesn’t mutter a steady stream of curses in Farsi while doing so.  
His eyes are redder than normal, and livid “Don’t you think we have a responsibility to do something?”  
“Uh, no.”  
“Aren’t…wait, wait, you’re Eridan’s brother, right?”  
“His cousin-brother.”  
“What?”  
“W-weird family dynamic.” Gog-damn your accent, it’s coming back strong.  
Gamzee nods sympathetically “I feel that pain, bro. My pa’s my nephew.”  
Karkat gives him a look “What are you blithering about?”  
Aradia clears her throat. For some reason, she has yet to put her shirt back on. You suspect that she is just so glad of the excuse to be breaking the rules, whichever societal human role it is that dictates boobs and the female nipple as being a sexual item (you never bothered to figure it out, because when the hell was it ever going to mean anything to you?).  
“Be nice, boys,” she says it lightly enough, but you see a whole lot more of Damara in that girl to feel safe and secure around her.  
Damara.  
Porrim and Damara. Why do you keep forgetting the people you love? If you hadn’t seen Rus Zahhak a few hours earlier in the town, you would be concerned that he’s dead as well. How the hell are you going to get in contact with Porrim and her woman?  
Then, as if on cue, there’s a knock at the door.  
Karkat springs up and runs to it. You’ve got no idea why he’s answering the door, but before you can call him out for taking over your domestic duties, your breath is frozen in your throat at the sight of him, retreating. From behind, he looks so much like Kankri. In your mind, anyway, if you colour the hair black, the skin brown, instead of the pale shades of white that make up Karkat, and broaden his hips just a little bit, it’s your husband going to answer that door.  
You are still trying to bring yourself back under control when Karkat leads what appears to be a brigade of middle-aged dads into the room.  
Lee Zahhak casts a disparaging glance at his son “Where is your shirt?”  
Equius gives him a very flat, very tired look “I had to rip it up to plug up deep flesh wounds in a mermaid royal.”  
For some reason, Lee’s expression doesn’t change at all. He strips off the flannel shirt he was wearing over his T-shirt (flannel- why, why do humans think that’s a good idea to put on clothes?) and tosses it to his son, who lets it fall on top of his head as oppose to catching it.  
“You do know that you’re covered in some kind of glitter?” adds the elder Zahhak.  
“Really?” replies the youngest, muffled underneath the jacket “I had no idea. Thank you for informing me. It’s not like it’s…wait a minute, how come you’re acting so normal about this?”  
Graa’ant Makara steps over his son’s (uncle?) body, once again prone and half-underneath the coffee table “We got a story fer y’all, kids.”  
Hana Megido bustles out from behind him and stuffs her daughter into a shirt, conveniently produced from her shoulder-bag “Young lady! What kind of place do you think this is, where you can wander around topless like some kind of loose woman?”  
She gives her a withering glare “I don’t know. Maybe a comfortable social setting utterly devoid of any sexual tension that the adults don’t invent to make me feel ashamed of my milk-sacs? What are you seeing, Mom, some kind of orgy?”  
“Dad,” says Karkat “What the fuck? What’s going on?”  
Lezlee Vantas shrugs, looking both defeated and determined “Graa’ant said he had a story for you. Sit down, kids, this is going to take some time. And somebody had better get Sollux out of the basement.”

Story: get fucking told already==========>

Your name?  
There is no perspective, for the moment. Yes, that’s right, readership. We’re going to have a bit of story without the buffer of a fictional character to relate the sensations, the actions and the thoughts. Scary thought, isn’t it? In fact, it’s just downright terrifying. This is a fanfiction, after all, and you’re specifically here to read a story from the perspective of a character whom you know and love. Or who has been butchered and changed to serve the purposes of some shoddily put-together AU, or to be shipped with an OC who has no business existing, in fictional terms or otherwise.  
Well, shit.  
Let’s get through this quick, then, before we break the fourth wall so hard it’s pulverized.  
Graa’ant Makara skips over the juicy details that might set up the story with the context that would provide the clearest image.  
But on the drive over, and what a drive that must have been, with all of them packed into the Jeep that Hana swapped for her Porsche when her first daughter entered kindergarten…but yes on that drive, they had decided by unanimous vote that, however hysterical the look on Cronus Vantas’s face would be, he did not need to know that his father and his husband’s father were once overwhelmed by their teenaged hormones and boned spectacularly in this very house- in the room that has become some kind of study, Lezlee thinks.  
They also decide that, as the children are going to be repeating this experience with their guidance, that they don’t need to walk them through how they figured out how to get along with another species.  
These days, said Lee, kids barely even notice that they have different skin colours from each other. So much different from when we were coming up.  
I know, isn’t it something, agrees Hana, I never imagined that this town could pull its head out of its ass, but here I am, raising my children.  
Lezlee was not yet convinced that his secret was safe so he said, I mean it, people, if anyone so much as hints to the fact that I had that regrettable moment with Cary Ampora-  
We’ll die horrible deaths, yeah, yeah, we get it, you homophobe, Jesus Christ, said Graa’ant, loosen up, everyone experimented at that age.  
Some of us never stopped, muttered Meulin.  
What are you trying to say, woman, about my relationship to Lee? Demanded Graa’ant  
I didn’t even mention- she began, but was interrupted by Lee.  
I have to wonder why Psiimon didn’t come along. Out of all of us, you would think that he would have the most emotional investment in telling this story to the kids, after what happened to Mituna-  
And so on, and so forth.  
They argued like small, middle-aged children and poked and wheedled at each other until they pulled up, were let in by Karkat, and discovered their blood-crusted, glittering children.  
This is the story that Graa’ant tells.  
They were all very young. Not that much older than their children are right now, but younger than their oldest children are.  
(“But Lee looked, like, exactly the fuckin’ same. ‘cept he had rock star hair goin’ for him. Eq, son, didja know that yer dad was into punk metal-”  
Lee kicks him sharply in the ankle “No, he doesn’t, because I burned every picture from that era, from both photo album and mind. Continue relating what matters, please.”)  
Perhaps it was their youth that lead them to agree to help save the world, even though their knowledge of how to do so, or even how to lead their own lives was confused and negligible where it did exist.  
It is equally possible that they were all just idiots. In fact, it is far more plausible. Yes, let’s go with that. So, they were all raging idiots and thought they were qualified to accomplish what the most legendary among their number were finding difficult.  
(“So we agree, an’ no sooner than we agree are we whisked inta this world ‘a magic an’ witchcraft an’ shit like that.”  
“That’s a terrible way to put it.” says Meulin.  
“Well, think up a better way.” counters Graa’ant “Or shut yer hole an’ let me talk.”  
“We were taken under the sea to save the world.”  
“Ok, ok, you win that round.”)  
To make a long story very, very short, they were given tails through some magic that Cary was not entirely sure of how to use. This proved to be a problem only one occasion, however, when he accidentally went the full-Monty and instead of turning Hana into a mer as he had intended, he turned her into a species of small, extraordinarily aggressive lobster that lived in the Twilight Zone of the ocean. She spent the entire adventure either mounted on Lee’s shoulder or hiding in Graa’ant’s hair, or sometimes being carried by Psiimon the way that Dorothy carried Toto. Except, you know, she was a fucking angry lobster, not a cute dog.  
Many adventures were had. Sometimes, they got through ok. Sometimes, they nearly died.  
Towards the end of said adventure, Graa’ant actually did. Lucky for his ass, Lee had just been qualified in CPR and managed to bring him back around. The others have yet to stop needling them about this experience, even after one of them has been married, had two children, and been widowed.  
(“Wait, wait, wait…Dad, you punched a shark?” asks Karkat, wide-eyed “And you fought alongside multiple underwater armies?”  
“Mom, what was that about you being an angry deep-sea lobster?”  
“Hold on, Dad, you liked punk metal?”  
“Why…wait, why did you have to kill all those people, Mom? They were just being tricked by their government! You could have saved them.”  
“Hol’ the fuck up. Why ain’t we heard ‘a this shit beforehand? This kinda…this kinda savin’ the world shit with fuckin’, fishy-ass motherfuckers, an’ legendary mer heroes…that shit ain’t…y’all gotta tell yer kids ‘bout that stuff.”  
“So my father was basically fucking useless except he held the lobster the entire time?”)  
And at the end of the adventure, when the Sea Witch had been toppled from her throne and sealed away into a pit of doom from which there was no return, they all collapsed on the beach. Each of them that had started out with legs had them back. Cary lay on his back in the water, close enough that he was still a part of the group.  
He said thank you. He said that he couldn’t have done without them. He said he was going to do what was best for them, which would be to make sure that no one remembered them, so they would never be sought out in the name of revenge or salvation.   
Never have their names mentioned beneath the surface again, except by him and Broderick, when they were reminiscing about the best and worst days of their lives.  
And then he swam off and they never saw him again.

 

Cronus Vantas: digest new information ===========>

Your mouth is dry, but you find the spit, and what’s more, the will-power to manipulate your leaden tongue into an objection “But it w-was Maryam that did all of that.”  
“Maryam.” repeats Nepeta under her breath, with a suspicious glance at Aradia “I know that name from somewhere.”  
“No you don’t.” says Meulin, sharply and fondly “You know nothing about anything.”  
“It was Maryam,” you insist, deaf to the girl’s interjection “She sav-ved the w-world from all of that, w-with my father’s help. He nev-ver- there was nev-ver anyone else helpin’ ‘em but Broderick Strider.”  
There is a note of bitterness in Lezlee’s voice “Well evidently your father made good on his promise to make us forgotten.”  
Too much to think about. Too much to absorb. God, you wish you had Porrim here, or Rus. Not like you know Rus very well, since you haven’t seen much of him since the accident. You just remember him being the only one who had his head on straight after the explosion that nearly claimed Tula and Loz, and it would be really fucking great to have someone who’s not in awe of his parent’s shenaniganising a few decades ago, or so caught up in said decades that they keep veering off topic onto memory lane.  
You have a vague idea of what they want to come out of this little story-telling session.  
History repeats itself, as you're learning over and over again.


	28. Blood seals and angler-beasts

Your name is Dave Strider.   
Everything is dark. Or, it would be completely, inky, bottom-of-the-trench-black if it weren’t for this brilliant thing your whole race has, because somebody who was writing the genetic mer code was definitely thinking outside the box when they decreed that all mers should have glow-spots. They’re not exactly like freckles, like the freckles sprayed across the bridge of your nose, but more like little discs of hard, but pliable tissues like fingernails that are flexible and set into your shoulders.   
The light you exude is red, John’s is blue and Porrim’s is a gentle kind of green that is extremely rare and stunning for being so. You have almost never seen a green-coloured mer before, or at least, mer of the particular colour that Porrim has.  
Terezi’s green. But like, not this green. This is about as green as green gets, and you’re staring like a gaping moron.  
The three of you are still filling through the choke of the tunnel. The size and shape of the tunnel changes every time you move. New crags of rock reach out to poke your mushiest bits. The ceiling bows and sags to scrape your head. Every now and then, there’s a sudden turn in the tunnel. Porrim will stop, and in the half-light you won’t notice she has stopped in time, bump right into her and end up being the delicious meat in a Porrim-Dave-John sandwich, as John too smacks into you and squishes you into the contours of Porrim’s spiny back.  
It would be kinda funny if the battle with the Golems wasn’t flashing before your eyes every time they closed. The whole thing is seared into your eyelids, in shocking detail. On the bright side, so far, what you’re seeing on the inside of your own eyes has been the scariest things to see.  
You’re waiting anxiously for one of those famed, mer-chomping beasts to make an appearance. Despite the fact that you are of course, massively grateful that you have yet to be caught, twisted in half, eaten and left to wait to bleed to death in the guts of an unimaginable horror (you’ve heard stories of mers getting eaten, then being cut out of the gut of the monster, half-melted, half-gone, and babbling nonsense, as the stubbornness with which mers cling to life won’t let them pass out or die for good), you were kind of hoping to see some strange shit.  
You only realise you have muttered this to yourself when Porrim scoffs, up ahead.  
“Believe me, boys, you will see some shit by the end of this. And you’ll wish you hadn’t.”  
John doesn’t seem to like her tone very much. Or, at least, that’s what you take the slight, lilting growl under his words to be signifying “You know I’m still not exactly sure what it is that we’re doing.  
Ah.  
Oh. Yeah, right, you probably should have asked that.  
If it involves hiding and running in a tunnel of evil darkness, then you feel it is safe to say there is nothing pleasant at the other end of this tunnel. In fact, you would be surprised if there weren’t a couple more Golems defending the other end of the tunnel. Whopee, more near-death experiences. Never can have too many of those, can you?  
It’s just that, well, this is Porrim, isn’t it? What’s Porrim Maryam, daughter of the legend and a legend in her own smaller way, going to do to two strong young things like you and John that wasn’t absolutely necessary?  
And yet, you find yourself agreeing heartily with John “It’d be great to know why you’re using us instead of, you know, fully-qualified mers, like my Bro or Dirk, or John’s sexy- shit- sexy…shit! Strapping brother!”  
Not much better, but once you get into one of those cycles where everything is a Mer-Freudian slip, you can’t get out of it. Everything you say is guaranteed to be terrible, and you just have to go with what sounds the least life-destroying and embarrassing.  
Mercifully, John’s pan is too occupied by other things to care about your mouth trying to sabotage your life “That is a fair question. Why us? Because we’re young and we’ll do everything you say?”  
The glow issuing from her shoulders flickers a little in annoyance “That’s certainly part of the reason, but I seem to have misjudged the level of sass you’re prepared to give to a leader of your people, John.”  
The tunnel bends sharply again. And again, your face is squished into Porrim’s bare, spiny back, and John’s mouth is planted against the back of your neck. Apparently, the nape of your neck is directly attached to your genitals now, because it sends a bolt of electricity right to your naughty bits and it feels almost exactly like the time you grabbed a shock-beast when you were younger, and was punished by mer-karma for the transgression.   
John doesn’t need to know this, however, so you play it cool.  
“So,” you say into Porrim’s spines as she wriggles out from underneath you “What is the deal, anyway? It would be kinda good to know why I’m risking my life. I mean, I know why. So I guess, how, specifically, I’m risking my life. How am I going to die, Porrim? How is that going to happen?”  
She manages to wriggle out. With the sudden release of pressure, John promptly and accidentally smashes you into the tunnel wall and you nearly bite through your lip.   
“I didn’t chose the two of you to come along because you’re young and pliable,” Porrim grabs you by the arm and tugs you away from John “I picked you two because I need someone I can trust.”  
“How the hell do you know you can trust us?” retorts John “You just met us.”  
She scowls. It makes a horrifying mask of her face, in the lighting “I know I did, but I also know I can trust you. I have an excellent intuition when it comes to these things.”  
Now you’re getting sceptical too “Oh, really?”  
The scowl deepens. A thrill of fear courses through your body, blasting away all fears of developing an erection thanks to John’s stupid sexy mouth. Somehow, you still manage to speak “Why can’t you trust my family? I mean, I know they’re all dumb shits. That goes without saying. They’ll stab anything ‘til it floats. If it looks at them funny, it’s an enemy and it must die, so yeah-”  
She cuts across you “That’s exactly my reason. You see, your family suffers from a saviour complex. If there’s someone in trouble, then they’ll be damned if they pass that by. Jake is like that too, only he’s more goofy and endearing about it. Do you understand?”  
“You want someone who’s going to keep their head down and ignore suffering?” suggest John flatly “Fine by me. Everyone’s dead if we don’t get whatever the fuck we’re doing done, right?”  
Porrim nods without turning around.  
John shrugs, though his face is dark with worry and weight “So I’m gonna work on saving the people back there, at the refugee camp. Vriska and Terezi need us to do this for them.”  
His face becomes pale and gaunt. Horrified with himself, once he realises what he has just said. He closes his mouth. A few silver bubbles trail out of his tightly shut lips, and get caught in his eyelashes as he shuts his eyes and tries to forget that what he forgot, and what he just said because of it. You want to drag him into a hug, but he wouldn’t appreciate that. Not here. Not in this moment. And you might not let go of him, once you’ve got him.  
You move on as fast as you can “Ok, so we’re young and easily corrupted because we’re scared. Nice. Good. What else?”  
She shrugs “I need your blood.”  
This is enough to jerk John out of his cringing stupor. The two of you exchange a glance that says ‘if we start swimming now I bet we could get to the entrance before she catches us’, and she notices, and rolls her luminous eyes.  
“No, no, you dumb fry, I mean that I need the blood of your lineage. The Striders,” she points to you “The Egberts,” to John “And me, the Maryams.”  
John is uncomfortable with the attention “Why…why do you need my blood?”  
She cocks an eyebrow “How did they tell you your father died?”  
“Badly,” he says shortly.  
“Whatever they told you was a gog-damned lie. Your father was a hero. And not in the moral sense, in the legal sense. Legally, he was a hero. An unsung hero, though, because he killed about ninety fucking people in the process of being that hero…there’s a blood seal I need to lift.”  
“Hey!” you snap.  
Porrim looks at you in shock. Obviously, she doesn’t expect you to be the one retorting.  
“You don’t talk to him like that. That’s his fucking family you’re talking about, ok? Maybe you’ve made your peace with whatever it is that John’s dad is supposed to have done, but this is the first that we’ve ever heard of it!” and to be honest, with the way it made your blood run as cold as the water in the blackness of a trench, you’re not even sure why you’re defending the man “And I swear to fuck, you had better explain what’s going on with this blood seal thing or I’m going to flip my shit acrobatically, and trust me when I say, that does not look pretty in close quarters-”  
At this point, Porrim claps a hand over your mouth. You’re totally ready to go. Like, to have a punch-out with a renowned hero in a dark bottleneck because why not, but then the warning bells start to go off in your pan as, belatedly, your flight instincts kick in at a faint but rank odour. The sound of something moving with great difficulty through the darkness, not far behind you. And a light, emitted around the corner and shining on the rock that you and the other two were recently squished against.  
Here comes some of those famous monsters that you were so anxious to see.  
Now, it’s a good thing you have spent over half of your life in training for moments exactly like these, otherwise you would probably be frozen to the spot in fear for more than long enough for the beast to sneak up on you and John.  
Thankfully, your family has trained you within an inch of your life. You react immediately.  
John gets grabbed by the arm, Porrim by the hair because it is the first thing you can get your hand around, and you’re jetting through the tunnel at a break-neck speed. Porrim is screaming.   
Possibly because she being scraped by the narrow walls, or because you’re dragging her by the hair. Or because John is screaming and so are you and she doesn’t want to be left out of all the fun.  
It’s not easy work, swimming at a high speed through a tunnel that bends and crags constantly. Your arms and torso are soon covered with scrapes and bleeding freely into the open water, which is not good at all. But it’s better to be bleeding from lacerated skin than because you’ve had the teeth of an angler-beast puncture your chest and breathing apparatus.  
John’s tail works frantically next to you, but you’re carrying his weight and dragging him forward for the most part. Porrim scratches your hand, making you relinquish your grip in surprise. She then takes up a defensive position behind you, so that she’ll be the first thing to get attacked if the beast gets close enough to start attacking.  
Suddenly, two kinds of light wash over you at once. The effect is unpleasant, dizzying, but also kind of welcome, since you were getting sick of looking at the others in a bath of dim, natural lighting. The light to the front of you is the kind that filters through from the surface. A comforting, muted light that fell on your city, and still had to be supplemented with lanterns that held glowing mosses and corals. The light behind you is a harsh fluorescent, the kind produced by a predator who thinks they’ve been very sneaky to evolve a wand of flesh with a glowy flap at the end of it, and for some reason thinks that this will also be an excellent trick.  
You can hear it, now. Beasts like it don’t generally sing, or make a noise of any sort. They are designed for stealth as well as trickery. But you can hear the rush of water, the scrape of its carapace on the stone walls as it struggles after you.  
The plan is already in your pan without much forethought. A cocktail of said training, both by your family and by the powers that decided you were going to guard Eridan Ampora, and then had made sure that you were prepared to do so, and some of the primal soup of instincts that sloshes around in your pan. The soup that boils when you’re deep in danger.  
You pick out the blackened shapes of two spears held out in front of the exit to the tunnel- the weapons of the Golems at the other end. And besides those spears, the silhouettes of a few Golems that are milling around in front of the exit.  
As the exit draws closer, you flatten yourself and John out so that the two of you are gliding low to the ground. If you suck it in, you should just about manage to shoot through the arch of the spears barring your way.  
At the last second, you put on a burst of speed, probably faster than you’ve ever gone before. John tucks his head into your chest and braces himself. What happens next is a little bit confused, because your head is buried in his hair for fear of it being ripped off if it were up at this speed. The top of your head is buffeted, as the shaft of one of the spears narrowly misses striking you.   
On either side, there are muted bugles of shock from the misshapen steeds and beasts that accompany the Golems.   
You turn, pushing yourself down into the water, beneath the exit, with one powerful stroke that actually hurts your muscles to produce. Porrim is overhead now, and moves to join you. The Golems have still not really had the time to react, but when you crack an eye open, you are eye-level with one of the steeds. A tentacle-beast. Not a very big one; just a deep-sea model, the one with the giant ears attached to its head to help it move, but the look in its eyes if malicious.  
This changes an instant later, as the harsh fluorescent light charges out of the hole and floods the surrounding water, blinding everyone and everything briefly. Porrim’s corded and scarred arms wrap around you and pull you close, putting back to the stone.  
Golems don’t scream when they are injured. The beasts make a cacophonous noise, but you don’t understand what they are saying- you’re not much of a linguist. Probably just screams of horror and unimaginable pain.   
You shield your eyes against the bobbing light of the angler-beast. The glowing appendage on its head whips around frantically, making the most terrifying light show you have ever seen. There are about five Golems. You say about because one of them is already half gone. You weren’t really willing to believe that the angler-beast wanted to eat something made out of coral and stone, literally, but the evidence is in front of you. A Golem’s top-half has disappeared into the gaping mouth, and another’s detached limb floats towards the darkness of the trenches beneath.  
The others have either lost interest in you or have completely missed your presence, with the distraction of the bigger beast trying to eat them all.  
Porrim grasps your arm “Let’s go,” she urges “Just swim low.”  
She sets out first, and dives far beneath the churn of the battle. Beasts’ blood drifts down in little ribbons, and some debris of coral and chunks of stone drift down from the Golems. In the distance, the ruin of the city is visible between the peaks of rock that held it. Used to be that the city was cradled in a bowl of volcanic stacks and tubes. When the light above went out, at night, you remember watching the hot magma shine issuing from the stacks far overhead.  
Eridan would squish into the windowsill beside you and propose that you venture out to one of them tomorrow, together, which was how you worked best, to explore. You generally humoured him. Eridan is, for all intents and purposes, the most annoying prick you have ever had the misfortune to meet and know in this life. But the wave of longing to see him again that hits you now is so strong, it makes you physically sick.   
“Dave?”   
Jon comes up to your side. Though you’re all still swimming for your lives, he has somehow managed to notice how disconcerted you are.  
You think that deserves an honest answer “I miss Eridan. I miss Terezi. I want to go home.”  
Up ahead, Porrim scoffs again “None of that, now. You’ve got your hands full just surviving out here…full, specifically, of the fate of the free submerged world.”  
This time, it is John’s turn to snap at her “Give him a moment! Gods. You haven’t…you haven’t been back to the city in cycles, so what do you care about it? No one you care about lives there. That’s our home, though, so shut up.”  
She sends a glare at him over her shoulder “On the contrary. You asked me what we’re doing? We’re going to save the only living family member I have right now.”  
Your mind jumps back to the legends of the family. They always did say that Porrim was one of those few unfortunates, who wasn’t able to eat her company in the womb. The word is ‘twin’, you think. She’s one of those rare twins. But according to the stories, her brother has been dead for years- if it was a brother in the first place. You think it was a sister. Maybe those are two separate people?  
You don’t know. You kind of find it hard to care.  
“Blood seal?” you say absently “You said you needed our blood.”  
“And,” adds John with a grimace “That my father killed a ton of people.”  
“Yeah. Listen, it’s complicated, and I don’t have the patience to give you the whole story. To make it simple, the box was breaking at one point. The one where we put the Sea Witch. The Condesce made it with the blood of three mer families, right? So their blood needed to be put on the seal again, to make sure the original spell was still there. Then it needed to be reinforced, with the blood of some others.”  
“But you’re not dead,” you counter “How come John’s father died in-”  
She cuts across you impatiently “He was killed, Dave. He was killed in the process of killing the others that we needed dead to make sure the seal was fed. We don’t have to worry about bringing a sacrifice with us this time, since there’s already so much blood in the water.”  
“How much blood do…do you want from us?” asks John suspiciously.  
“Not much. About the amount you’d bleed when you cut your finger on your spear, or less. Now, hush. The city is swarmed, see? Stay close to me and we’ll get through this. Keep your mouths shut, your heads down, and we might survive this.”  
The city is not far off now. And now that you’re passing among the volcanic stacks and tubes, you can see why Porrim needs the quiet. Sheets of coagulated blood, mixed with particles of black ash drift over the city, and hang on it like a fog will sometimes hang on the surface, when it’s about to storm.  
Golems flit among these sheets of ash on beasts that you know, and many that you have never seen before. Hundreds. Possibly a few thousand.  
Wonderful. Great. You can totally do this.  
Or you’re going to die.  
Either way, you’re swimming towards the ruins of the place you have, up to this point, lived your entire life, to save the world. Or die trying.  
Or, you know, just die painfully.

Dave Strider: be Cronus Vantas =======>  
Cronus Vantas: do something brave ==========>

Your name is Cronus Vantas, and while you’d be perfectly happy to be brave, to save the world or whatever, you’re not exactly sure how you should go about that.  
Things have gotten just a little bit too weird. Exorbitantly weird, in fact, and you have no idea of how to progress from this point, even with the dump of information you have just received. The same can be said for the rest of the people in the room. Eridan has come up by now, from the salt-water pond where he left Feferi to heal, and is sitting at your feet, resting his downy head on your knees. A hand rests in his hair, in a way that is either fond or protective.   
Protective, probably. You’re still a mer at heart, even if your accent has slipped over the years and you don’t think about quadrants anymore, except your red quadrant, where Kankri is snugly fit. Being in a room with a bunch of land-pounders, all of whom are privy to your most secret secrets, is still not anything close to an ideal situation for you.  
Despite this, here you are. Sandwiched in between Karkat, who you have decided that you like, and Lezlee, who you’re still not sure about, you are in an especially weird position. But you guess this is nice. Your immediate family, gathered at your feet.  
At least, it’s nice, given the fact that all eyes in the room are trained on you. Like they once used to follow you around rooms, down streets, just anywhere and everywhere, really, because the city knew they were looking at their future Condesce. The feeling is not the same here. Not the same cloying atmosphere of revenant admiration, of fear and of annoyance (mostly because you were a cocky little show-off) that clung to your skin, so it was like swimming open-mouthed through a cloud of squid ink every time you went outside.  
But it still is that demand to be impressed. To be dazzled. To understand why you’re so special- why you deserve to lead them, above and beyond what your birthright dictates.  
Good thing you’re used to performing for tough crowds like these.  
You manage to appear both easy and serious, which is not an easy feet between two sharp Vantas-shoulders, and with one increasingly heavy little brother perched on your feet, which are completely full of pins and needles. Still, this stuff is kind of in your blood.  
Your father was the Condesce- is, still, assuming he survived the slaughter in the submerged city. He knew what he was doing, like no one else did. Except maybe, for you. It his blood, after all, in your blood.  
Whatever that means.  
“Here’s what we’re going to do.” you say.  
“It’s shit.” says Eridan.  
Everyone looks at him.  
He shrugs without guilt “Just makin’ an informed assumption.”  
Sollux covers his face with his hands, possibly to conceal the wide, fond smile that spreads across it.  
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” you say again, with feeling, and bop Eridan on the back of his soft head with your fist “W-what you’re gonna do anyway. Stay put.”  
There’s a groan of protest from the adults, a sigh of relief from the kids (they were all sure they’d be forced into the water the moment they understood what it was their parents had done) and one explosive curse from Karkat, which no one bothers to investigate or acknowledge with even the quickest weird look. He must do that a lot.   
“Not ta say toldja,” Eridan inspects the quick of his bruised nails “But toldja.”  
“Hush, boy,” rumbles Graa’ant Makara “Save the family drama for behind the scenes.”  
Eridan bristles “Excuse you, but I am a prince. You shouldn’t talk to me like that.”  
Graa’ant’s eyes flash, and a slightly maniac grin, more like he’s baring his teeth in a growl, twists his mouth “An’ I’m’a single father ‘a two. Trus’ me, boy, ev’ry boy thinks he’s a prince an’ shouldn’t be spoke ta in certain ways, but that don’t mean we gotta listen to him. So unless y’all got somethin’ nice ta say, then don’t say it?”  
Eridan stares. No one has ever spoke to him like that before, except, probably, for your own father. Well, your father, his uncle.  
On the bright side, it shuts him up. Gamzee punches his father (nephew?) in the arm and mutters something in their native language. His father punches his son (uncle?) in the arm back and mutters something back.  
You’re about to say something sharp to both of them, but there’s a knock at the door.  
“I better get that,” you say, your host’s instincts kicking in immediately.  
You try to stand, but Karkat and Lezlee have you trapped in place with the sheer surface tension of the tessellating arrangement. And Eridan’s bony butt remains firmly planted on your feet. He glares up at you silently, daring you to try to extract the appendages. You can tell he really enjoys having butt. It’s a joy that most mers will never be able to comprehend, the with the way that the mer shape just flows straight down into a powerful tail. Any butt to be had is a narrow butt.  
Whoa, you are distracted.  
“I’ll get the door.” offers Nepeta with a sympathetic smile.  
“No, sweetie, let me get it,” her mother places a hand on the top of her daughter’s head and pushes her back into her spot on Equius’s lap “It could be a gun-wielding maniac or a sales-person.”  
Meulin Leijon strides with a purpose towards the door. Those with a view of the hallway crane their necks to watch her in interest, as she opens the door and, after a moment’s pause, welcomes someone in briskly and shuts the door hard behind them.  
Damara Megido lopes into the living room. A cigarette glows between her red lips as she surveys the crowded living room, wearing a mixture of practiced disdain and mild contentment on her face as she does.  
She nods to her mother “Hi, Mom. Hi Ida.”  
There are twin shrieks of anger and excitement, and a moment later, the dishevelled, sand-plastered woman is buried under a lands-slide of family. The three of them roll around, hugging, squeaking, shouting in Japanese in varying tones of rage and delight.  
Your chest aches in a way that you never thought it could.  
Then you notice something else, only slightly less worse than missing Kankri so badly at the moment “Damara. Where’s Porrim?”  
She peers at you past her sister’s sun-burnt shoulder, and says very frankly “I’ve got one fuck of a confession for you, Cronus Vantas. Did you know you have a sister-in-law too?”


	29. The Great Escape, if it were conducted by goldfish

Your name is Kankri Vantas, and you’re confused.  
Light has flooded the room, but the light is of a quality which you have never seen before. A strange, filtered, dancing kind of light, as if it is shining through layer after layer of warped glass.   
This must be what it light is like, underneath the water.  
“What the shell-” Meenah has just enough time to say before a fist whips out of the bloom of light and clocks her in the jaw.  
She is thrown back in what to you appears to be slow-motion, thanks to the water, but her head is thrown back so sharply that you hear her neck cracking painfully. The whiplash she’s going to have from that blow will be excruciating. She lets out a muted cry of shock. From out of the light comes the owner of the arm.  
What looks like a perfectly normal teenager, except for the blue tail fused to his waist that recalls the shape of a shark’s, the fins on his back and the amazingly sharp teeth that are bared in an animal growl. The growl reverberates through your spine, which feels much more exposed- so alien, now that it is just a continuous strand of vertebrae that extends further than it ever has before. You shudder at the feeling.  
Also, he’s got some massive front teeth. You’re caught between controlling your tongue and the triggers it might spew, and between recommending the child your orthodontist when it hits you that he’s a mer, and probably has no use for human dentists. You’re underwater, for heaven’s sake.  
As your eyes adjust to the strange light, you realise that a giant hole has been ripped in the side of whatever it is that you and Meenah have been trapped in.  
“You,” growls the teenager, seizing Meenah by the arms. You expect he would be grabbing her roughly by the collar, except that she has no shirt on “You have got so much to answer for I don’t even know where to start.”  
Meenah spits a small cloud of shocking pink blood into the water. Her face contorts to a manic grin that makes you very glad the golden trident is out of her reach “Oh, oh, you fuckin’ think so, ya fry? Ya fuckin’ think I got me somefin to answer fer? Oh, my gods, we got us a badass here, folks. He’s gonna make shore that I get what’s comin’ ta me! Ain’t he jus’ the most frightenin’ fin y’all ever saw!”  
The boy gathers up a fistful of her hair and draws back his arm for another strike. Your body tenses in the anticipation of another hair-raising growl and the blow, but he lowers his arm just as quickly as he raised it. An expression of exquisite pain fills his features- one you recognise all too well, from those in your patient-base who have just lost a loved one. Literally, just.  
You bet wherever the body is, it is still warm.  
He must feel the sympathetic eyes on him, because he looks at you for the first time.   
Before you can think of anything sufficiently meaningful to offer up, another two mers squeeze into the hole , nearly knocking into him and his bleeding prisoner. One is a woman, you think, because they have breasts as well. Who knows? Since mers certainly have no need to lactate (according to Cronus, anyway, since they’re not a mammalian species- and it both disturbs and amuses you to know that your husband was hatched out of an egg), maybe breasts are like red hair is in your world? Not everyone has it, but those who do are pointed out and ostracised by the idiots that unfortunately inhabit every society.   
The other one doesn’t look much older than the first, but at looking at him, a cold sensation of recognition washes over you. It is not really an appropriate, nor accurate sensation, as you have never actually seen him before. But you have seen his brother- Dirk Strider, Cronus’s best friend and bodyguard and most trusted friend. Not trusted enough to know that Cronus isn’t actually dead, but he was trusted enough to meet you. Even if it was just a fleeting moment, you remember being enthralled by his face.  
Mers are attractive in the way that many humans can be. In fact, from the handful of mers that you have encountered, mers and humans have basically the same facial features. But at the time, you didn’t know that yours and his species would look so similar, even in his natural form, so you stared at him for a long, long time, thinking on how strange it was. You remember especially his red eyes. The same eyes that now regard you with a veiled fear.  
This must be Dirk’s little brother.  
“Dave Strider?” you say, the name jumping from the back of your mind to the front of your throat “Is that you?”  
His eyes flash in what is either fear or anger “How the hell do you know my name?”  
“I know your brother. Kind of.”  
“Kankri.” says the possible woman, their voice stern and wavering at the same time “Let me look at you.”  
They rush over to you and lean down in front of you, grasping you by the shoulders. You start to draw back at the unsolicited physical proximity when it registers that the person said your name. And then another thing: this person, you do recognise, because there was a period in your life where you saw them almost every day for hours at a time.  
“Porrim?” you gasp.  
It still feels strange and dangerous to open your mouth and to have water fill what little space inside is not already occupied.  
She nods, her eyes brimming over with tears of an odd green tint, like chlorophyll “I can explain everything, I promise.”  
“Yes, Porrim, I wish you would.”  
“But not right now. We have to go.”  
Over her shoulder, through her drifting black hair (longer since you last saw it), you see Dave peeling the other boy off Meenah, with some difficulty, until the other boy finally goes limp and allows himself to be dragged off without trying to strike her again.  
Meenah recovers quickly, and starts to scan the room for the trident. When she sees that the shaft of it is gripped in your hands, she frowns. You thrust the trident towards Porrim without a word.  
She looks down at it, surprised, but silent.  
“Where am I?”  
“You’re in the city.” says Porrim.  
“What’s left of it.” says Dave bitterly.  
You notice he is covered in scratches, as well as the odd, deeper gash. The colour he bleeds into the water, in light, translucent puffs, is close to your own red. Just a lot more vivid than you have ever known blood to be.  
Unnerving and comforting at the same time. Your stomach is turning flips as, finally, the gravity of your situation begins to catch up to you. Abducted. Shoved into a cage with the mer that is responsible for the carnage that must wait outside.  
Now that you’re thinking about it, you become aware of a heavy stench mixing in the stale water that filled the cell. The sensation is like nothing you have ever experience before- your sense of smell has never been so strong, so accurate and acute. It’s blood, outside, blood and somehow, fire, underwater. A fire burning in a submerged city. Now that would have been something to see.  
“We need to go now,” insists Porrim, taking a firmer grasp of the trident “Meenah, it’s up to you whether you come or not.”  
She cocks an eyebrow, flicking a drop of blood from her cut lip “Y’all ain’t here ta crab me as well?”  
“No. What use do we have for you?” says Porrim coldly “You have seen what you wrought out there, haven’t you?”  
Her face is heavy with guilt, but tempered by this anger so fierce that it seems to be contagious. You are possessed by the urge to strike her hard in the stomach, to make her look long and hard at what she has done, and to understand the pain. Even though you haven’t really seen what happened. Even though the pain is only yours by association.  
You realised that she was incredibly smug, certainly, while you were talking. But you did not realise how just above fault she perceives herself in this entire situation. It’s enough to make you want to peel Dave off of the first mer, and set the kid on her again. From the way he’s hanging slack, however, from Dave’s arms like a limp doll, you don’t think he’s going to be much help for a while.  
“Kankri, you gonna let her leave me here?” she grins at you, daring you to stand up to her, and to yourself.  
To live up to the righteous man you’re supposed to be. How she sussed you out so quickly is anyone’s guess- maybe you’re not as subtle as you think, when it comes to how you think and how you present yourself. And maybe you are not as changed from that dumb kid in college, trying to fix the world in one fell swoop.  
“I don’t claim to understand the situation at all,” your eyes flick over to the kid Dave is holding “If you don’t know the game, you don’t play it or attempt to referee.”  
Porrim bumps her shoulder into yours, in what might be a graceful gesture, or an accident, as she is having some trouble handling the great length of the trident. You see she is trying to keep it out of Meenah’s reach. If she dove forward at this angle, Porrim could easily catch her on the gut by hefting it up, or rake her down the middle of her back. Or just gore her, to keep it simple.  
Pushing you behind her, Porrim ushers you towards the opening. Dave gathers the kid closer to him and mutters something that jerks the kid back to reality.   
He gives himself a shake, as if dispelling whatever foul thought it was that had him paralysed, and swims of his own free will now.   
Meenah watches, but makes no move to follow or stop you “How did you crack this clammer open, by the way?”  
Porrim glowers “That should be obvious to you.”  
She shrugs carelessly “All I know was there was a ‘splosion, then a flash, an’ here I am, with y’all punchin’ me up. What you got, a second key and a whole lotta angry ta work out?”  
Dave covers the other kid’s mouth and hauls him out and around a corner before he can respond.   
“Use your pan, Meenah, supposing you ever have. What do you see in front of you?”  
Her face lights up “Ah! A Strider, a Maryam an’ an Egbert. Just like the first time, yeah? When this here clammer needed some fresh blood to keep dear ol’ mom from bustin’ free an’ goin’ on a killin’ spree like this.”  
Porrim makes no attempt to hide her disgust “You had better stay here. I don’t trust myself not to stab you.”  
Eyeing the trident, Meenah grows visibly uneasy “That there stabber…that’s not yours to take. Shore as hell ain’t mine either. Y’all wouldn’t catch me floatin’ with that thing! That’s the Sea Witch’s!”  
“Oh yes? Why was it left in here at all?”  
Again, she shrugs “The hell if I can fingure out what this crazy lady wants.”  
Dave pops his head around the opening “Porrim, we gotta go. The Golems are back. They brought more. I don’t think siccing a beast on them is gonna work this time.”  
Porrim considers the trident in her hand, then thrusts it out in front of her and twirls it elaborately. A circle of gold and light fills the air in front of her, like there’s an entire solid shield strapped to her arm.   
“We’ll be fine, Dave. This is important.”  
“John’s still hurt,” he retorts “That hit he took to the stomach broke more than one of his ribs!”  
She glowers again. She’s got to find something else to do with her face. The trident stops spinning slowly, and the current of swirling water it had created that was mussing your hair dies slowly.  
She and Meenah stare at each other for a long moment.  
Outside, the sounds of battle come ever closer. There must be something out there, other than mers. The three of them must have come alone, otherwise that opening would be crowded with mers trying to get a look in at the cell where the Sea Witch was held. From what Meenah has told you (with a mark of pride and smug satisfaction) her sire’s deeds were only matched in their atrocity as by their scope.  
She was utterly without mercy or compassion, after a certain point in the long and complex career Meenah described to you in loving detail. Something like Hitler, except she terrorised the submerged world and used magic in the place of spell-bound, over-zealous nationalists and blind patriotism to accomplish her means.  
You don’t exactly have the full context. It’s not your culture. It’s not your war. It’s not your people that are suffering- whose blood is thick in the water, but you are hurting for them all the same. And you have no desire to help anyone who would help the kind of monster that would wreak the carnage and the havoc you can smell outside.  
So it doesn’t really bother you to leave Meenah inside the cell, though she begins to laugh the same way the laughter of the worst cases in an asylum sounds, bouncing off the halls and the walls of their cell.   
However, once you’re outside, you want to dive straight back in and pack yourself into the tightest, darkest corner of the cell you can find.  
Carnage.  
You didn’t know what carnage looked like, really. Grainy pictures of the civil war in school, and seconds-long news clips of dead children in the Middle East don’t do it justice. Swimming straight through it; now that’s a good way to understand what it means to be surrounded by blood, by smoke and by the smell of the people that the fire producing all of that smoke has cooked and killed.   
You can’t really tell what the city would have looked like in its whole form.  
Cronus’s stories have given you a clear mental image of dreaming spires and streets without roads, because no one walked in the city, but you can’t begin to pick out these shapes from the splintered, gutted wreck. In fact, your eyes are just being caught by the fact that there are fires underwater.  
How does that even happen?  
It shouldn’t, but there they are. They move almost like a seaweed caught in the current, except that whatever it touches is soon blackened and crumbling. There is not much left to destroy at this point, and the flames are just the crumbs of what must have been a roaring inferno, when it was in full force.  
And, as well as the fire to distract you from your escape, is the weirdest, most fantastic battle you have ever seen. What kind of battle have you ever seen in the first place, that was not heavily edited, scripted and performed by the young promising actors of the year?  
The real life scenario is very different. Very difficult to process. Beyond confusing, just to behold.  
“What the fuck is going on?” you rasp to Porrim “What are those things?”  
Behemoths, made of living rock, garlanded with seaweed and some kind of underwater vine that seems to be biding them together at their craggy joints. All of them are scrapping with something huge that has so many tentacles you don’t know where to look.  
“That,” she nods towards the writhing mass of tentacles, being set upon by the stone monsters “Is a Leviathan. It’s what the Loch Ness monster will look like when he’s a big boy.”  
“’he’” you repeat “Hm, yes, I suppose it was rude of us to assume his gender.”  
“Porrim, we gotta move,” urges Dave.  
You notice that he is bleeding from a particularly large slash across his palm. So is John, when you look for it.  
Something about a blood seal? You’ll figure that out later.  
“We’re moving,” says Porrim “Stay low, boys. And Dave, try not to attract any more fucking sea-beasts.”  
“The lurking-beast is so not my fault! That thing was attracted by the sounds of battle, ok? Not the dainty little noise I made when I got cut.”  
God, they’re both a patchwork of injuries. You can practically pick out a pattern where the skin has been peeled back or gashed open or allowed in some other way to gush blood, blue and red, into the water. The blood all around is a slurry of different colours, in sheets, the way rain appears to be in sheets when caught in the sunlight.  
Porrim wraps an arm tight around your shoulders and forces you low into the water. Beneath you is this gaping chasm of blackness that spreads out in every direction like a carpet. With your newly enhanced vision, you can pick out one or two pairs of rising lights.  
When you point these out to Porrim, she chews on her bottom lip “Don’t look at them unless they’re attacking you.”  
“What are they?” you press.  
“Deep sea beasts,” mutters John “They live below us.”  
“My brother used to fight those things,” adds Dave “Back when he was a beginner.”  
“Your brother, Dirk Strider?”  
The fins on his back suddenly shoot out, in what you assume is something kind of defensive pose. You lose interest in what he has to say, just for a moment, and twist around to see what your own back is doing. There is a fringe of delicate, incandescently red tissue travelling the length of your spine and melding with your tail. Doesn’t look like the kind of stuff that can firm up into spines whenever you’re scared or suspicious, which is a shame, because you would love to be able to do that.  
Sure, it might be triggering for others to observe, but how many other opportunities are you going to have in life to inflate yourself like an angered pufferfish?  
Life is short, as the scent of blood in the water is determined to prove. When you get the chance to experience something new and different, then you should take it before it is whisked away. Possibly, along with your life, shortly after.   
Out of the murk, only a few feet in front of you, rises a spear-shaped head, followed by several dozen feet of neck. Porrim tugs you back to a safe distance. Open-mouthed, you watch the tower of the sea beast glide out of the gloom, and straight up into the fight. It’s bottom half is a direct conflict to the slim, swan-like proportions. It trails behind that giant neck an ovoid blob of a body, and some fins shaped and sized like canoes.  
“Is that a plesiosaurus?” you manage.  
The beast sinks its teeth casually into what you assume to be the thigh of one of its aggressors.  
“Why…why are they fighting those…what are those?”  
“Golems.” says Dave, a hand cupped around his eyes, presumably so he can get a better look at what’s in the dark “Lot of stuff going on down there.”  
Now that you look, you see that it is not the ink black you first thought. There’s a storm of activity down there. You can see odd and graceful bodies, drawn in outlines of light-spots like the stuff that showers the mers’ shoulders. As Dave has judged, an awful lot of that stuff does seem to be coming to your part of the water.  
Porrim sees this for herself and urges you to swim faster.  
Unbidden, there are images coming into your mind. Not so much images, as disjointed memories of smells that you have never smelled before, of tastes, of pains that are not yours and several colours that have no meaning to you in the context that you see them. But when all of them are combined, they make sense as a collective. As a portrait of something that you have never seen before, but that you know all about.  
It is a dizzying sensation.  
You’re glad that Porrim guides you for the shelter of a small channel in the rock face, beyond which you can see ranging, submerged hills lined up into the distance.  
Open water is not a good place to be, you think, and you think this without assistance. It is just something you know. You have always known, even before you knew what kinds of things, specifically, could be waiting out there.  
“Porrim, why does this feel…acceptable?”  
Porrim gives you a strange, guilty look “What?”  
“My body. Why does this feel acceptable to be, to be changed the way I’ve been changed? This isn’t right, is it? I’m a human. I shouldn’t be knowing the mer things that I know right now.”  
She shakes her head “Can we talk about it when we’re out of mortal danger, please? I’ve got two fry- uh, two kids to think about as well. They’re too young to die out here, Kankri.”  
“Are we?” says John, somewhat harshly “I didn’t think there was an age limit on dying out here. Seems like everyone’s doing it right now.”  
“It’s the new big thing,” agrees Dave dryly “Everyone’s just up and dying, all over the place. Dying young, dying old. Dying in your ‘coon. Dying on top of a pile of floaters of strangers.”  
You’re going to assume that ‘floaters’ does not have the same context in your language that it does in theirs. And yet, the irresistible, embarrassing urge to giggle at the word seizes you and takes charge.   
The two younger mers are not impressed by your lack of understanding of what irony is, but you don’t let yourself care about that. For once, you’re just going to laugh and let the public think what it will.  
Finally, you make it to the channel of rock. Without being asked, Porrim stops and allows the boys to fall to the floor of the shallow shelf beneath you. Their tails must be hurting from the exertion of their trip. And besides that, they’re covered in small lacerations, and each have massive gashes on their palm that must have something to do with that blood seal they mentioned earlier.  
Blood seal.  
Whose world is this?  
Where the hell are you?  
And why does it feel like a home-coming?  
Dave peers at you over his own, heaving chest, as he lies slack against the wall and catches his breath (breath? Water? Now you’re confused).  
“Hey, you. How do you know me? Who the hell are you, apart from Porrim’s brother.”  
The look on Porrim’s face.  
If an expression was enough to induce a sudden, violent and instant death, then the younger Strider would be floating for the surface now.  
But that does shed a light on a number of things.

Kankri Vantas: be your college!self ==============>  
College! Kankri Vantas: say goodbye to Cronus ==============>

Your name is Kankri Vantas, and you have spent the majority of the drive accepting that you must say goodbye to your boyfriend for the time being.  
It’s only until the end of the summer, you tell yourself reasonably.  
He has to see his family, you follow this up with, to deliver the report that will either unite our species or initiate a war that will destroy the world  
But he’s my fucking boyfriend, says another part of you, he’s my man. He’s my body pillow and my rock and my favourite person in the world after Porrim and Karkat and how the hell can I be expected to survive a whole summer with no contact when I could barely make it through two weeks with limited contact (finals week; afterwards, the two of you screwed like rabbits)?  
All of this is happening beneath a mask of calm, collected composure.   
As far as Cronus is aware, you are not about to fling yourself at his feet and threaten death, self-harm, harming him, mutilation and other things in an attempt to keep him on the shore. And, to the extent of your knowledge, you’re not about to do that. That is, assuming you can keep yourself under control. If not, then what should be a tender and bittersweet parting moment will be a battle bloody enough to make ‘Game of Thrones’ jealous.  
Now that you’re out of the car and walking him down to the water, you are thinking on his world again.  
Exactly how much of the politics of his world are going to depend on what he says about yours is not clear to you. He’s an important person. A prince, you think. That’s your understanding of his position, anyway, from your limited human view. So what he says must carry some weight. To have sent so important a figure onto dryland means that this mission holds a deep importance for his city, although you understand the importance is more of a personal one to his father.  
According to Cronus, his father was on dryland once. He never explicitly told Cronus why or what he was doing up there, but only that he made some very important discoveries about his gill-less neighbours and learned things about himself that he never would have without their help.  
One thing has especially stuck with Cronus.  
You can almost hear his father’s voice, in Cronus’s strange accent, sounding not all that different from his son’s.  
“W-what the land-pounders are,” he told Cronus from a very young age “Is fundamentally insane, like w-we are. They fight w-wars like us. They got their starv-ving masses an’ rich elite, like us, an’ their dictators an’ v-villains an’ monsters. They’re tramplin’ their ow-wn w-world up there an’ dumpin’ oil on us like no one’s business, but you know-w w-what? They’re good people. Like us, they start out good, most of ‘em. They grow up good, unless they get show-wn some unkindness, and ev-ven then, most of them are good people. W-when somethin’ breaks, there’s alw-ways a couple of ‘em tryin’ ta fix it. It’s important to remember that they’re just like us. It’s easy to think they aren’t, ‘cos they’re so different, but it’s true.”  
Thanks to this little speech, Cronus suspects that his father had intended to send him up onto the dryland since he was born. However, he needed an excuse. Officially, it was still a secret that the Condesce had ever set fin on dry land- and not even a fin, but a foot. The scandal of the knowledge that the Condesce had once risked the safety of his people by living among the drylanders could have wrought havoc on his careers and relationships, so it was kept a close family secret.  
And now you know it too.  
“And now we wait.” says Cronus.  
In the last year, he has lost a lot of his accent. Sometimes it creeps back in on the ‘w’s and ‘v’s, but for the most part, he has lost the strange twang to an average West-Coast accent. You’re in mourning for the exotic one he used to have, and secretly hope that a summer back home with his family will at least give that back to him.  
“For your bodyguard?” you can’t help but grin at the thought.  
You’re dating a prince. Bodyguards and political intrigue all the way.  
Nodding, Cronus drops into the sand and starts to pull off his shoes. You don’t turn away as he strips down entirely, folding his clothes in a neat pile for you to take back to the car, once you’re finished crying into his shirt.  
Seeing Cronus naked is no longer the confounding, mesmerising experience it once was. It has settled into something more comfortable and intimate. After the initial months after he revealed the circumstances of his anatomy to you, there was of course a rush of lust that had to be sated at least once a day. Sometimes up to three times a day if there was nothing else that needed immediate attention.  
But now, you have cleared that from your mind. Of course you’d gladly make love to him right now, but his body has gone from being a sexual thing to worship to something you’re used to having laid out on top of you in the mornings. Just a pleasant, warm thing to feel and observe.  
“Will it hurt this time?”  
Cronus shakes his head “The antidote is painless. It puts everything back the way it should be.”  
You nod, not convinced “You said the initial transformation hurts, though.”  
“This ain’t a transformation, Kanny, this is just me undoing a spell.”  
He takes your hand and squeezes it, hard. You lay back in the sand beside him, content to have your shoulders touching and your hands laced together, and nothing else.  
The sky is difficult to look at without closing your eyes a little, although it is overcast and grey. That does not bode well for the future, you think. You would rather say goodbye to Cronus on a gloriously sunny day, but nature has other ideas.  
Fate too, maybe, concerning whether this is just a temporary goodbye.  
You don’t want to think about that. If you start thinking about that, then you’ll think about the rest and you’ll be in an even worse mess than you already are.  
“I’m coming back.” says Cronus.  
He does that sometimes.  
Reads your mind, when your mind is threatening to spill all of the dark thoughts about how long you’ll be able to stay together into your throat and out of your mouth. It’s not an actual example of mind reading, like, thoughts, mind-reading, but just intuition. A couple’s thing.  
He can’t really read you like an open book; he just generally has a good impression of what’s going on in your head.  
You tilt your head to him “So, what is the first thing you’ll do when you get home?”  
He considers it “Say hi to Pa and Eridan. Gods, Eridan’s gonna be huge now. He’s about yer brother’s age by now.”  
With a pang of disgust, you think about the long month out of your summer that is about to be given over to your family. The disgust is not directed at Karkat, but rather at your father. You are not looking forward to seeing that man again.  
“Will he make you tell stories about this world, do you think?”  
He rolls his eyes “Oh, gods, yeah! Eri’s obsessed with the upper world. He’s got this weird obsession with it, I mean, stronger than normal mer babies. They’re all about their sixteenth cycle when they get to go to the shore on their own for the first time, but, you know, Eri’s a psycho about the upper world. I’m sure he’s already been following boats around and stuff.”  
“Isn’t that dangerous?”  
“So is Eridan. And he’s got what I got. A Strider.”  
You can’t reconcile the idea of children being allowed to wander the world with only each other for company and protection. Mer-children must be far more competent and well-trained for challenge than their human counterparts. When you think about how quickly Karkat and one of his friends would crash and burn, left to their own devices, you have to shudder at the thought of Cronus’s own baby brother out on his own, with just another child to keep him safe.  
But, as you said, mer-children must be better at self-care.   
It makes sense, considering they live in a world where the things that can kill them share the same water and can be heard, according to Cronus, singing from the darkness of the trenches, for mates and for fun.   
“I don’t suppose you can tell them about me.”  
Cronus’s face falls. He shakes his head “Nah. They’d…they wouldn’t want me up here, if they knew. Pa might twig anyway.”  
Your heart skips a beat “How so?”  
“He might figure it out that I’m in love, you know? Parents are good at that.”  
“Mine isn’t.”  
Cronus shrugs “We got different parents, Kanny.”  
There are so many more things that you want to talk about, but before you can even steer the conversation onto another topic, you hear the splash of something jumping out of the water.  
Beyond the surf, you catch a flicker of red disappearing beneath the surface.   
After a moment, a pale, blond face rises from the water. He could be standing- you think it’s a he- from his rigid balance in the surf, but you know there’s a powerful tail from the waist downwards.  
He lifts a shiny, muscled arm from the water and waves to Cronus.   
Cronus grins and waves back.  
He then turns to you and kisses you on the cheek.  
When he catches you looking funny at the boy in the water, he smiles again “Don’t worry about him. He won’t tell anyone.”  
Cronus kisses you one more time. On the mouth. For a moment that cannot possibly manage to be long enough, and when he separates, it feel as if he was never there at all.   
Cronus walks into the water without a backwards glance, and that is the last you will see of him until classes start next fall.  
You think you can survive. You hope so, anyway.


	30. The business of a mysterious stranger

Mysterious stranger: introduce yourself ============>

Mysterious stranger?  
You’re no stranger. You have already been introduced. You just haven’t had much exposition or exploration, that’s all. Thanks to the way this story has been written and the way that the narrations of certain, major characters are prioritised over minor characters, you haven’t had a chance to have your voice heard so far.   
You’re no stranger. You’re just mysterious, and that’s it.  
So, Mr Mysterious Man, what is your name?  
It’s Captor. As in Psiimon Captor. As in Sollux Captor’s emotionally distant father.  
Yep, that is definitely you. You will claim both the child and the emotional distance, although you’re not sure which one you dislike more.  
Now, before the readers are biased by any unfair prejudices concerning your character, you would like to make one thing abundantly clear: you love your son, unconditionally. And it’s a good thing that the average parent is afflicted with said unconditional love, otherwise you might not hold the slightest affection for the strange, lisping creature your wife left you with.   
Having said that, you still do love Sollux very much. He is not quite the centre of your world, but if your world has a core like the Earth’s, then he is the fast-moving magma that encircles the heart.  
What you’re doing right now is being done because of the sheer power of that love for your son. If you didn’t have a son, then you would be elsewhere, trying your hardest to forget the kind of thing you’re about to subject yourself to.  
Mers.  
The submerged world.  
No, your dealings with said world have never been pleasant. The history of drowning in your family and the contact you have had with the submerged world are not unconnected, you think, but there is no sure way of confirming this.  
The time you spent working with (or for; you could never decide which it really was) Cary Ampora was not a pleasant time. However, it was the best time of your life, which just goes to show how much you have enjoyed your years here.  
If the most exciting part of your existence so far has been holding the angry Hana-lobster on the mission to save the world, then you haven’t done all that much with your life, have you?  
So, where are you right now Psiimon Captor?  
You’re on the beach.  
Which beach, Psiimon Captor?  
One of the stretches near to the docks, where you first met her.  
Met who?  
You’ll tell the story, alright? Calm down. The story will be heard in good time.  
The beach that you are on is not much to speak of. Thanks to the docks nearby, the smell of oil and machines pervades the air. Your town is pretty good about caring for its environment, but the fact remains that wherever humans are, they will pollute.  
With the thick smells in the air, you’re not sure if she will show up at all. While it is true that most of the industry has gone quiet for the moment, thanks to about a third of the dock workers being melted, and to the rest of the world sort of falling to its knees in a kind of half-apocalyptic shock for roughly the same reasons, there is not much activity. Even so, you are not certain she will show her face.  
“Hey!”  
Nope, there she is.  
You turn and scan along the shore, until your eyes find something green and wet bobbing in the surf.   
The mer’s hair is plastered over her eyes, but she does not care. She is blind, as you discovered when you first disentangled her from the net. Now, you’re not sure how she finds her way around- some kind of echolocation maybe? Anyway, you suspect that the reason she was tangled in the net in the first place was due to her blindness, but she is far too proud a person to ever admit that.  
In fact, she was so proud and thankless when you got her out of the net that she had been caught in underneath the dock that rather than even bothering to thank the kind human man for risking his safety to secure hers, she splashed you with her tail and threatened death if you ever shared the story.  
This is the second time she has come back.  
The first time was to make sure that you hadn’t gone back on your solemn promise (made with teeth the size of knives at your throat) not to relate the experience.  
This, the second time, is at your request.  
A part of you was hoping that she might not appear. That way, you could say that you had tried, throw in the towel and call it all good. At least no one couldn’t say that there was a minimal effort expended, right? And besides, after the way you have already saved the world, why should you be expected to bend over backwards to do it again?  
“Hey,” you are not sure how else to respond “Are you going to come closer?”  
She shakes her head “You can come out here.”  
“No, I can’t. That water is dangerous.”  
“Not anymore it isn’t. The poison is all gone, you wimp, now get those flabby appendages out here.”  
You remain resolute “No. It’s dangerous.”  
She frowns- strange, you think, how did she learn that without ever having seen anyone do that before? You heard somewhere that blind people all smile because it is a natural human reaction. It’s weird to think that there is a whole other species for whom frowning and smiling are also inherent and natural gestures.  
“You really think it’s a smart idea for us to be bellowing at each other?”  
“Well I’m not coming in there.”  
She shrugs “Fine, fine, but the moment another one of your kind comes along, I’m swimming off. Don’t blame me if you’re still shouting at the water like a moron.”  
You draw just a little closer to the water’s edge, so that the foam that the waves leave when they recede spots the tops of your shoes.  
The mer, Terezi, swims a little closer, but not into the shallows. That is how she got herself stuck the first time. Swimming too close to the dock out of curiosity, you think (she has never told you why exactly she was so close to the shore, and frankly, you’re not interested), and getting stranded in the shallows.  
If you squint, you can still see a bracelet of scar tissue where the net was tangled around her wrist and digging in.  
“What is that you want? I need to be home.”  
“What’s happening in your city?”  
Her face is dark, but that might just be because she doesn’t know how else to look “Terrible things, alright? A human wouldn’t understand. You guys don’t have to live in constant fear. You guys don’t have to know what it’s like to have all those fears overwhelm you, so just use your limited imagination, alright?”  
Now, you could contest this, but her tone of voice is that of a person who is under too much stress to be taking questions right now. You should let her get back home to attend to her troubles, whatever they may be.  
“Why do you need me?” she demands “I’m not even sure why I’m here.”  
“I need to ask something of you.”  
“What?”  
“There’s a mer up here.”  
She blinks “Who?”  
“I don’t know. I saw my son with him on the beach by the house past the cove.”  
She scowls “I don’t know that place.”  
“It should be easy to find.” you have to wonder how you’re going to direct her when she can’t see where you’re pointing.  
“Past the cove, right?”  
“Yes.”  
She nods “Then I’ll find it. You want me to take the mer back, right? To take your son out of danger?”  
“Yes.”  
“Do you know why there’s a mer up here in the first place?”  
“No. All I know is that he’s out of the water.”  
She frowns again “On…on legs, right?”  
“On legs.”  
“Oh.”  
“There’s one more thing you should know.”  
You weren’t sure if she should know this, given that she might not carry out the task if she knew who she was returning to the water.  
“It’s not the Condesce, is it?” she says, suddenly hopeful “We’ve been looking for that old salt all over! No one knows where he went! He and his son just up and vanished!”  
The Condesce.  
Cary Ampora.  
Now things are start to come together. Not to your eyes, but someone will understand this trail of bread crumbs that Cary Ampora has left behind him far better than you ever could.  
“That’s just the thing. The mer I need you to get rid of is his son.”  
You would know that smug smile anywhere. His son, whatever he means to your son, is dangerous and needs to be gone from your lives as soon as possible. You could tell that just by looking at the features that are so similar to his father’s.  
There are only a select few people in the world, both submerged and dry, who can smile like that and their intentions are almost never good.  
That’s why you have never liked Cronus Vantas very much.

Your name is Cronus Vantas, and you have a sister-in-law.  
Damara Megido was the one to tell you this, rather than the family that you have happily married into- well, you’re pleased about it, at any rate. Damara has explained, within the echoing confines of the bathroom where you ushered her when it became apparent that she was going to tell you something not to be shared with the general public, that Porrim isn’t actually your sister-in-law. In reality, she would be something like an aunt-in-law.  
Now, human and mer blood relationships match up pretty well. Neither culture marries blood relatives, but there are different concepts when it comes to marriage, because mers don’t get married, but they have two romantic partners, respectively vitriolic and loving, one platonic partner, and then another interfering biddy to make sure that the aforementioned vitriolic love affair doesn’t result in death. You’re not even sure if an aunt-in-law is a thing, but if it is, you have one.  
“She just prefers to call herself Kankri’s sister,” says Damara in summation “Because they’re closer in age. She said after going to school with him that she just couldn’t think of him as a nephew.”  
You’re having a very hard time processing what you are being told.  
Sure, you just had your entire culture’s recent war history re-narrated for you by a bunch of old human farts whom you thought of as entirely, disgustingly normal.  
The story popular underwater is that the Condesce and Maryam were responsible for saving the world from the Sea Witch. Instead, you have been told, and what’s more, convinced, that the true culprits are actually a collection of humans now settled comfortably into their old age.  
Try as you might, you just can’t imagine Graa’ant Makara ever raising a spear in battle. Sure, you can imagine him being half-naked and weapon-wielding in general, but not underwater. Underwater?  
Hell to the no.  
You can’t make a warrior out of the slightly crazy, but affectionate human who’s raised his disturbed son (nephew?) with such clumsy care. You just can’t reconcile him with your cultural narrative.  
However, Damara knows the story they are telling.  
Once she had shaken her sister and mother off (a task which needed the help of several people to be completed, to hold Hana back from launching herself at her daughter again), Damara was happy to recite several details of the story that you hadn’t heard, and that they hadn’t told. Then she locked herself in the bathroom with you and this is where you are right now.   
“So they were really there?”  
Damara rubs her reddened eyes with the back of her palm. She has been weeping silently and steadily since you got to the relative privacy of the bathroom.  
You haven’t yet summoned the courage to ask where Porrim is.  
“Yeah,” she says shortly “Like they said.”  
“Your mother told you?”  
“No.”  
“Then-”  
“Porrim told me.”  
You have to ask her.  
Damara plucks a piece of toilet paper off the roll and wipes her eyes. She pulls an eyelash down onto her wet cheek without realising.  
“Eyelash,” you say uselessly, pointing to it “Uh, there.”  
When she has trouble picking it off, you lean forward, with her grudging permission, and pick the eyelash off of her cheek, and flick it into the bathroom trash. You can’t remember ever being this physically close to her, after college.  
She had her own business to get on with, and Porrim and Kankri were each other’s’ friends. You and Damara only had the same friends.  
“What else did Porrim tell you?”  
Damara shrugs “She told me that she was careful that she never met you underwater. Those tattoos you have…you had. The wave patterns you wore when you first came up. Did you really think her tattoos weren’t the same thing? I’ll give you a clue, why you didn’t notice.”  
She nods towards one of the charms strung up so that it hangs over the mirror. One of the many wards you have scattered around the house, as a veil against the crowds you anticipate that will soon descend on the beach to search for mers hiding in the town.  
Now, it is coming together.   
“You know, I’ve always liked Porrim, but I also always had the feeling that I shouldn’t. She w-was dangerous or something.”  
Damara nods “She’s incredibly dangerous. She’s my wife.”  
Yeah, you heard about that.   
There wasn’t really a wedding- the same way you and Kankri down-played it, they just signed the correct documents, put on the rings and did something nice afterwards. You remember that after you got married, rather than partying or having sex straight on through the night, you and Kankri consummated the new unity once on the couch, then spent the rest of the night in a state of scandalous undress, listening to a late-night radio show and talking about what it would be like if you adopted a kid.  
“Did she…did she get back in the water?”  
She nods “She just stripped off and waded in. I didn’t know the magic could fall off that fast.”  
You stick your leg up in the air and prop it up on the ledge of the bathtub, where Damara sits, and roll down your pants leg so she can see the beginnings of the stem of the scar that travels all the way up between your legs.  
“See that?”  
Damara squints “The seam where your tail split.”  
You nod “Sometimes I still bleed purple. I don’t mean to. When I’m not thinking about human, I guess, w-when I get real close to the water. When I feel the water again. I start bleeding purple and my gills open up again. See, it’s my real body, and my real body’s never really gone. Just hidden and wrapped up in something else.”  
Dropping her face into her hands, Damara lets out the most defeated, shuddering sigh. The most emotion you have ever heard out of her. Well, an emotion that didn’t involve anger, indignation or some form of lust.  
“You know you’re going to need to go back into the water, right?”  
You nod “I know.”  
“Somebody has to be up here, working to keep things together.”  
You look at her.  
Damara looks back at you, daring you to suggest it.  
You don’t “You…you guys can keep it all together, I guess. As one. The wards are up. Eridan will be safe, so will Fef, if she gets the proper medical care.”  
“What does that look like?”  
“Eridan knows what to do. He has my bubble. Listen, if I’m going to do this, then I’m not going to prolong it.”  
Damara nods “It’s hell down there right now, isn’t it?”  
You shrug “Probably. I would have left days ago for Kankri but…but I just wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do. Then Eridan shows up and I have to be here for him…but now that there are more people who know what’s going on.”  
Going over to the window, you throw it open and strip your shirt off, dropping it in a heap on the floor. Your jeans follow it, however, you have no intent of streaking down to the water the rest of the way. Nor do you care where your boxers wash up once you shed them.  
“Kiss my dog for me.”  
Damara leans on the windowsill and watches you go “I don’t think I will.”  
You give her a very stern look “Well she hasn’t been walked today and the excitement of having about fifty people in the house will make her piss on ev-verythin’. Just take her out.”  
“Fine.”  
Then Damara closes the window, and you walk away from your house in silence, towards the blue sprawl of the sea.


	31. Reclaiming (re-claming?) the other half of the royalty

Your name is Eridan Ampora.  
Well, you’re going to admit that you got jealous as hell when your brother wandered off into the bathroom to do his secret war talk, or whatever the hell it is that he’s doing that is of such dastardly importance that he can’t share it with the next most important person in the room. In terms of mer royalty, you mean. You’re not so vain that you think yourself above everyone else. Well, not these people.  
Well, not the older humans anyway. They have earned your grudging respect, with the stories that they have told and you have little to no problem with the fact that most of your culture’s knowledge of its recent heroes and conquests are all a bundle of fucking lies. Almost little to no problem.  
Where were you?  
Not so vain….importance…ah, right, yes. You were getting to that, the subject of where exactly it is that you are right now, and the specific context of being in that place, because apparently boring shit like that is essential information.   
You are sitting in the salt-water pond in the basement, fully clothed, and with only your feet in the water up to the ankles. It feels stranger than you can communicate to be in contact with clothing- dry clothing no less- as you have spent most of your life undressed. You don’t understand what the obsession with covering the body is up here. It bewilders you that the women are concealing their chests. None of the girls you know would ever think to cover their breasts. What’s the big scandal, anyway?  
Not to mention that you’re only in a little bit of water, and that you have legs. That stuff is just too weird to think about, so you don’t.  
Instead, you listen to Feferi and try your best to translate the context for Sollux.  
Feferi looks better, and she certainly sounds much better, as she reclines on the edge of the pond and clasps your dry hand in her fever-clammy hand.  
She closes her eyes as she speaks, as if she is afraid that she will be back in the city if she opens them.  
“…and it was my fucking sire. I can’t fucking believe it was her. I just…I never saw her before, right, and the first time I look at her she’s destroying everyfin I know and everyfin I love.”  
Sol nods sympathetically, but still has almost no idea of what is going on “Wait, so you and Eri- uh, Eridan, you guys started out on the mountains outside of the city, right?”  
“Yeah.” You shudder to think of what it was like, to watch your home burn in the glowing distance.  
“How did you guys get separated? I missed a little bit, I think, between the time that Fef said she saw the Witch and the time she started to escape.”  
You explain as patiently as you can “Listen, me an’ Fef, we’re important people, right? So there are contingency plans for if the city starts fallin’ in all ov-ver itself. Technically, w-we’re not supposed to be on our own either, but I sneaked past Dave.”  
Feferi frowns, her eyes still closed “Oh, gods, I hope he’s ok.”  
“He’s fine,” you say stiffly “You know-w Dave.”  
“Yeah…that’s why I’m scared for him.”  
You roll your eyes and give her hand a firm squeeze “C’mon, Fef, it’s not like he’s going to run straight back into the city or somethin’. He may not be the coolest of people, but he’s at least got a pan between his ears.”  
Sol clears his throat.  
“Oh, right. W-well long story short there’s a checkpoint w-where only w-we’re supposed to go to meet our carers. The idea is that w-we’re supposed to w-wait there with our younger guard for the older one to show up and be the authority and shit.”  
Sol blinks “Wait, why do they think you’re going to be safe with some asshole your own age?”  
Feferi opens her eyes a slit to give him a dispraising glare “What do you mean?”  
“I mean he can’t protect you if he’s your own age.”  
“Um, yes he can. It’s kind of his job. You know, what he’s been trained to do from birth. He knows exactly what do when bad stuff goes down. That’s why we get a guard from our spawning, so they can be around us all the time.”  
Still, Sol is confused. You kind of get that in his culture, the children are weaker and subordinated. Where they should be defending themselves and their home along with their family, they kinda don’t have to in this part of the world, and instead prefer to stay inside and push buttons to make lights on a screen move. You really don’t get the attraction of that, the screen-thing, so there must be something lost in translation.  
“So,” presses Sol, eager to orient himself in the story “You guys went to the check point and then what?”  
“We didn’t. I didn’t.” says Feferi “I made him go ahead without me.”  
“Not of my own v-volition, you understand. It w-was either I w-went ahead to the check-point to wait for the others and make sure that they didn’t leav-ve before Fef came back from the city, or she w-was going to kill me.”  
“Who…who did you go back for?”  
“My sister.” says Feferi flatly “But she didn’t need my help.”  
Again, you shudder. Feferi has already told you exactly why Meenah didn’t need her help. The sad thing is, you actually can picture Meenah doing what Feferi saw her doing pretty easily.  
While you were hunched in the safety of a small cave a little further along the face of the cliff, Feferi was tearing through the burning allies to find her sister, and when she did, she found her in front of the cage where she had guessed she would be. The Sea Witch’s cage sat underneath the city, under several layers of living space built from coral and other, organic stuff that made good building material. Whenever there was an earthquake, no matter how small, you were sure that the Witch was about to break free and destroy you all.  
The funny and sad thing is, you didn’t feel the slightest tremor when the cage broke open for real. If it hadn’t had been for the blaze on the sky and the gurgling sound of death then you would not have known there was anything going on at all.  
“The main thing is I didn’t find anyone. I couldn’t find anyfin. I was just hiding, Eri, just waiting for somefin else terrible to happen while we were down. I just started to hide and swim as fast as I could. I saw so many floaters.”  
Sol at least has the good sense to snort at this behind his hand. You have had to tug him to the side to explain its meaning to him, so he isn’t so confused and amused every time it crops up in your vernacular.   
“And then when I got to Meenah, she had the key….i thought, hey, this makes sense, because I didn’t smell much magic in the water over the smell of all that fire, and I was shore relieved to think she’d just been pressured into doing it. Sol, you don’t know much about our world, do you? Whale, the Sea Witch was an awful creature in general, but she had some ideas about the subraygation of the human race that a lot of people liked, so she had some supporters…anyway, I thought one of those supporters had made her do it and I was looking all over, just, so fucking ready to destroy them for what they were doing to my family.”  
She pauses here, to wipe a few tears from her cheeks that disgust her. You know she hates to cry, let alone in front of strangers. You lean forward and swipe them up for her, then wipe the fuchsia stuff on the front of your shirt.  
“But there was nofin else around. Nofish else. Then I fin-ally got I, and by the time I got it figured out Meenah was alraydy half-way finished with krilling me. So I swam away. It didn’t take much effort to lose her in the city, you know? Lots of fire, and Meenah, she’s really fast, Sol, she’s known for that, except that I was faster because I just…I couldn’t die by her hands, and I don’t think I would have escaped the city if I weren’t being chased by her. She stopped at the city limits. And I fucking…I fucking saw her. The Sea Witch. My mother, I guess.”  
“I turn back to look at Meenah just to make sure that it was really her that was trying to krill me, and I saw the Sea Witch right behind her. Just…just sorta rising out of the smoke and the fire. Sol, have you ever seen smoke underwater? It looks like sheets. Like seaweed. And she just rises up out of what looks like this black cloud of seaweed. She has so much hair. I thought I was being orifinal, growing out my hair, but it turns out that she had her hair long too. Somefish coulda told me that I was accidentally rayplicating her, don’t you think? She grabbed Meenah. The good thing is that Meenah looked really surprised when she grabbed her, so I guess things weren’t going exactly to plan. I guess she threw her back in the box. I didn’t wait to find out. I just swam away, and there were Golems chasing me and then I washed up and…I swear to Gog, I think I smelled Vriska somewhere. Vriska was in the water.”  
She turns her tear-shining eyes to you, wide in the desperation to be believed and supported.  
“Eridan, I know Vriska was there. I don’t know if it was her or her blood.”  
You shrug “I’ll ask the others, Fef. Maybe they know something.”  
You doubt it, though. Vriska is famous for her hate of the dryland and most things associated with it. Her moirail, John, has had to become a sort of auspitice between her and all things human, just to prevent her from hopping on shark-back and ramming the shadow of every ship that passes close to the boundaries of the city.   
Now that her horrible story is out in the open, Fef is a little more relaxed. Her muscles are less tensed, and even the wound looks a little better. Of course, you can’t actually see if it looks at all better, but she is no longer tensed in agony around it. Gog, you wish you had found some drugs that would have worked on Fef’s wound. Human painkillers are toxic to you and next to useless, thanks to the speed and nature of your metabolism. You even searched Cronus’s bubble for something medicinal, but all he had in there were charms, and a scrap of fabric that Tentaboo must have shed at some point in his long, mouldering stay in that bubble.  
It occurs to you that said plush is still in your pocket. Cronus made it for you when you had just been spawned, apparently, and your childhood memories are full of that horrible, sagging monster. You carried it around with you everywhere, unaware of its essential and unrelenting ugliness, then handed it off to Cronus when he began the first of his four-year missions to the upper world, thinking that it would give him comfort. Ok, so maybe it just sat untouched in the bubble for a few years, but that is not to say that it can’t do some good here.  
“Here, Fef, he needs a cuddle.”  
Feferi accepts the knitted horror with a faint smile “Oh my gosh, I remember this guy. He’s so cute.”  
Sol’s eyes go wide “Jesus Christ. What is it?”  
You nudge his side with your elbow “Hush, don’t give my Tentaboo a complex.”  
Sol mouths the name in shock.  
“What, you never had a horrifically ugly monster plush that you carried around at all times?”  
“No, I just had a Pikachu that I slept with until I was ten.”  
Feferi takes one of the tentacles and slaps it around the water, as if to make the toy dance “When Cronus disappeared, Eri was so depressed I thought he’d never smile again. But then Dave told him that at least, wherever Cronus went, then Tentaboo went with him. He smiled a little more after that,” Feferi reaches up and strokes her wet knuckles along the side of your face, and it occurs to you that you have never been conscious of Feferi’s skin being wet like this before “But you never really got your smile back, Eri.”  
“Well he ain’t dead, Fef, he’s just an asshole.”  
She smiles “Ok, Eri, that’s ok.”  
Your skin has begun to flush purple under her hand, and you draw forward to whisper “Can you not pap me in front of Sol?”  
She shakes her head “I thought we would never see each other again. Can I kelp it if I want to give me moraieel a bit of loving?”  
“Oh, uh, Fef, he knows I’m supposed to be married to you, by the way.”  
She wrinkles her nose. Feferi hates any and every mention of the eventual fate that the two of you are going to have to dodge. Knowledge of your moraillegiance is limited, so far, just to your inner-circle of friends and your father, though if it were up to you, he would not know- he’s just very good at guessing when his sons are in love in some way. Some day, you’re going to have to face it. So far, the plan as it stands is for Fef to fake her death temporarily, then you assume the throne alone, then she makes a miraculous comeback and you are so moved that you reveal your long-time pale courtship to the whole city and everyone is so moved by the pale rapture that you share, no one protests.  
That’s not going to work, of course. At this point the only way to duck out of marrying Fef would be to find another spouse.  
You look at Sol “So you know how Fef and I are supposed to be married.”  
He blinks, and his face falls. You swear, you can almost hear the sound of his heart cracking, and it is the most satisfying noise you have ever imagined “Yeah.”  
“And you know how Karkat and Gamzee are, like, the best friends ever?”  
He glowers “Uh, no, I don’t think I do. Karkat did kind of run off and leave him forever.”  
“Yeah, well, I think they’ll do better now, so, like, me and Fef, we’re like that. Except it’s the mer version of that, so getting married in a red- uh, a romantic relationship, would be to us, like, marrying…”  
“A cousin?” offers Feferi. You’re not sure that she is sure what the human equivalent of a cousin is, but, Gog bless her, she wants to help you out.  
Sol’s eyebrows climb “So you guys aren’t…”  
“In love? No, not in the way that we want to get married. I mean, I shore want to spend the ray-est of my life with Eri, but not like husband and…uh…wives? Is that the word? Sorry, we don’t have those in our world. It’s just ‘partner’ or something like that.”  
You try not to be pleased by how visibly Sol has brightened. He folds his arms, aiming his eyes at the ground, in an effort not to be caught in his moment of euphoria. If Feferi weren’t here, you would be kissing him right now. But Feferi is here, and you know that she would start being all weird and pleased and smug about it.  
“I heard a lot about you Sol, when we were kids.”  
“Oh. Really?”  
“Really,” she nods “Eridan only got a summer with you, but Gog, if he wasn’t ray-living that summer every chance he got.”  
You pinch her arm gently “Fef, you’re running low on this fish puns. That’s about the fifth ray-related one you’ve done in the last hour.”  
“Oh, shut up.”  
“SOLLUX CAPTOR GET YOUR ANEMIC ASS UP HERE YOUR DAD WANTS TO TALK TO YOU!”  
Karkat’s voice penetrates even the thick, supposedly sound-proofed walls of the salt-water chamber. It bounces around, the effect of the words are devastating on Sol. You watch with disgust as he withers at the prospect of seeing his father, of exchanging words with him while being forced to pretend that he doesn’t know that his father was almost disappointed to see that his son survived the rain.  
He gets up “I’ll be back in a second.”  
“ERIDAN, YOU TOO!”  
Feferi’s eyes flash, and she grabs your hand with the hand that is not clutching Tentaboo “Hey. Don’t go.”  
“I’ll be right back, I promise.”  
She groans, but gives you a quick farewell pap. To avoid the crowd of humans in the living room, you and Sol take the hallways towards the back of the house. Karkat points you towards the beach. Sol must be feeling unusually affectionate to his long-lost friends, because he gives Karkat a fond slap on the butt and dodges the resulting wind-mill of punches with nothing but a cheeky grin.  
You understand why he’s excited, suddenly. For your part, you can’t stop thinking about that escape clause. Finding a new spouse, that is. You might not have to look that far.  
Sol’s father is an underwhelming experience.  
You have always had a specific image of the cold, loveless man that has made such a mess of Sollux and his nerves. Who basically gave up on life and by extension his remaining family member when his eldest son died (killed himself? You can’t remember, and the latter would not surprise you very much), and would have forced his son to do the same if Sol had not had the good friends that he did.  
You kind of expected a hunched, or looming villainous figure, and for some reason his face was scarred to hell and he was rubbing his torn hands together in a constant, silent cackle of evil glee. Now that you think about it, he looks like your own father in your head, and you can’t figure out why the scars would make him evil in the first place. Most of the people you know are scarred to hell, and fantastic anyway.  
Your thoughts- they think themselves, sometimes.  
Sol’s father, Psiimon Captor, is not an impressive figure. If you had to describe him one word, you would call him utterly boring.  
Psiimon looks at you with unguarded distaste “Sollux, come here.”  
The two of you stop in front of him. Two of you. Sol takes your hand.  
“Why?” he demands “What’s over there?”  
“I want you over here right now.”  
“How come?”  
“Because I said so. Come here.”  
“That doesn’t sound like a good reason to me,” he glances at you “Does that sound like logical reasoning to you, Eridan?”  
“Uh, no. No I don’t think so.”  
“Ok. Eridan doesn’t think that’s a good reason. I don’t think that’s a good reason, so I don’t think I’m going to be moving from here. Why don’t you just spit it out,” he adds, like he’s spitting out the bitter seed of a sour fruit “Dad?”  
“I know what you are.” He says to you.  
“I know you know what I am. You were the one who held the Hana lobster.”  
“You shouldn’t be here. Your world needs you right now.”  
You shake your head “My father was painfully clear about where he wanted me. He told me that I was to stay up here until he himself came to fetch me, and I’ve got no intention of disobeying that order.”  
He actually rolls his eyes “Yes, I bet he was very clear.”  
“What the hell is this about, Dad?”  
“This is about responsibility,” he puts his hands into his pockets “It is my responsibility to protect you, just as it is Eridan’s responsibility to protect his own world.”  
You’re about to protest- not because you disagree, but because you really don’t like Psiimon Captor at this point- when something shining rolls up out of the surf.  
Terezi Pyrope waves to you “Eridan!”  
This is too convenient, is your first thought. But you brush it away and let go of Sol’s hand.   
“Terezi?”  
“Have you seen Vriska?” she grins at you and gestures to her useless eyes “I haven’t, for obvious reasons!”  
You never thought you might be glad to hear Terezi’s famous, dry cackle of a laugh, but there it is, and Gog, is it wonderful to hear.  
“No, I haven’t!” by now, your feet are in the water “Why?”  
“I swear, I thought I smelled her out here!”  
She swims a little closer, adding “I guess not. Are you ok?”  
“Yeah. You?”  
She shakes her head. Now that you look closer, you see her body is a veritable patch-work of small scratches. She must have been on the move since the first attack.  
But she only shrugs “I’ve been better, Eri, but never much better. It’s like we always thought, isn’t it? The damned Sea Witch is back.”  
By now, you are up to your waist in water. Terezi draws herself right up to you and curls her tail around your legs, hugging her bony arms about your waist and nuzzling you in the friendliest way you have ever been touched by her.  
It’s kind of creepy.  
“Terezi-” you start.  
Her eyes meet yours, and you know, if she was practiced in expressing emotion through those blind things, then they would be full of remorse “I’m really sorry about this.”  
You’re being pulled out to sea, under the sea, before you can take a breath to scream.

Eridan Ampora: be Dave Strider  
Dave Strider: mourn your losses =============>

Your name is Dave Strider, and Jegus fucking Gog, how did this happen?  
“Where…where are they?”  
John turns to you, as if you have all of the answers, and repeats his question.  
Porrim wraps an arm around her brother’s shoulders and pulls him close “Don’t get out of my sight for even a second, Kanny. That goes for you boys as well.”  
Her warning falls on deaf ears.  
The camp is gutted.  
Not by fire, but literally, the way a knife is twisted into the stomach of a fish and the insides are pulled out. Any and every kind of tent, shelter or temporary dwelling has been slashed open, so that the curtains of fabric are blowing in the sea-breeze, open on an empty, bloodied inside. There are clouds of blood everywhere. The taste and smell fills your sinuses- too much to figure out the individual scents. Too many people you have never met.  
You literally cannot figure out if your brother or father are dead because there are dead strangers clogging up your nose.  
Jegus Grist.  
You know it isn’t a good idea to shout and frankly you don’t give a shit.   
“Bro! Dietrich!”  
You only ever use your brother’s full name when it’s serious. He should know to get his ass out here, if he’s still inhabiting his physical body.   
Everywhere you go, there are more and more of the dead’s blood, but none of their bodies. Where the hell are the bodies? Why are there no bodies to accompany all of this blood that they have spilt?  
What could have happened?  
So much of the military survived. So many soldiers and their children, who also would have been well-versed and well-trained in fighting. How could they have all fallen to beasts as easy and simple to trick as the Golems? Your city was a clever one. Its people know how to fight and lie and cheat and steal another few days from death.   
They would not have died like this, would they?  
“Dietrich!”  
You round a corner in the aisles and see where exactly all of the dead have been put.  
The pile of them is huge, weighted down with a net cast over them to prevent the bodies from floating up to the surface. Those who are directly underneath the net are gradually being severed to pieces. The rocks that the nets are weighted with are massive and will be immovable. The only way you’re going to get them out is by cutting the net open, which is exactly what you do.  
You don’t care if what is going to happen on the upper-world, when this giant float of corpses are discovered by a fishing boat or whatever, with no one to hide the evidence. You just need to know if they are in here.  
So you look. While the bodies peel away from each other and separate, suspended as if weightless, you push and fight through the corpses. There are faces you know from passing on the streets. There are faces you know from brief meetings in the palace courtyards, or from the courts of the Condesce. There are faces you know have never seen before.  
But there are no faces that you really know.  
Not your brother, not your father. Not your friends.  
You are still in the middle of an expanding sphere of corpses, thinking on your luck, when John dodges up from the bottom of the dispersing pile and wraps an arm around your shoulders.  
“It was her.”  
Your tongue feels too heavy inside your mouth to move, but you force it “Yeah.”  
“What do we do?” asks John.  
“How should I know?”  
“You always know stuff.”  
“I don’t know what to do right now.”  
John rests his head on your shoulder, but it seems to be more out of exhaustion than affection.  
It’s been a long day, and the day is only going to get longer.  
“Let’s get out of here.”  
Porrim has no intention of remaining here for much longer.   
The four of them are sitting in a blasted, clear space at the edge of the ruined camp. Porrim does most of the talking. Her brother appears too shell-shocked by the strangeness he has just found himself hip-deep in. Like you, John is just too tired to make much of a display of himself. He just wants to be asleep.  
Porrim, on the other hand, is quite eager to talk.  
“What we need to do now is plan.”  
“Plan for what?” you say, your voice hollow “How we’re going to die? I’d like to die in a furious blaze of glory.”  
“I want to be gored through the stomach.” adds John.  
“I want an explosion,” you decide to up the ante “An explosion of…like…puffer-beast. That’d be a fun way to go.”  
She glowers “That is not what I mean. I mean we need to figure out where the survivors have gone.”  
“Survivors?” echoes Kankri “You think people survived this?”  
“Yeah. My brother isn’t in there, neither is my father. Some of our friends aren’t dead yet either.”  
“What if their bodies have just been taken away?” asks Kankri “To be eaten somewhere else?”  
“Eaten?”   
Kankri looks at John, and you see that he’s not entirely there, behind those eyes “That’s what’s happening, isn’t it?”  
John gestures to the column of corpses steadily rising up to the light at the surface “You think those guys were killed to be eaten?”  
“Uh…perhaps. I don’t claim to be familiar with this culture.”  
“Yeah, you don’t need to claim to be familiar with this culture to know that that’s not how we store our food.”  
“Porrim, curb your brother.”  
Kankri gives her a weird look “Why do they keep calling me that?”  
“Because that’s what you are, Kan, I’ll explain later.”  
The guy stretches himself onto his back, staring up at the sun far, far above, and folds his arms behind his head “I’m not even surprised anymore at this point.”  
“Shit.”  
Everyone looks at John.  
“What?”  
He points to a little to the left of the column of rising bodies, and ducks so that he is hugging the ground.  
“What is it?” you ask, crouching alongside him, in spite of yourself “What’s going on? Why are we freaking out? Is it somebody we know?”  
Now you see it. A massive shadow, hanging over the ruin of the camp. A billowing shadow, like a great curtain of darkness.  
“What the fuck? Is that seaweed or hair or what? What am I seeing?”  
Porrim grabs Kankri by the scruff of his neck and tugs him underneath the shadow of a rock, then stuffs you and John in after him. Being stuffed into close quarters with John (so help you Gog, why is the terror not sufficient to keep you from getting hard? Think unsexy thoughts, and do it now, Dave) is not as fun as you would have hoped, what, with the other stranger’s joints buried in your back as well.  
“Stay down.” she hisses.  
Porrim quickly disappears in the direction of the shadow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaaaand there goes Eridan....


	32. A reunion

(Several years earlier)

College!Cronus: finish your report ===================>

“…and in summation, I have found the upper-world to be informative, if rather difficult to comprehend. I would not recommend the land as a place viable for colonisation, however, because the conditions of the land would mean a great deal of terraforming that would reduce the quality of the land in the first place. I mean, why would we bother to go up there in the first place if we’re going to drown it anyway?”  
The court does not burst into laughter. Thank Gog that they do not, because it would be incredibly patronising and ridiculous if it were true. Also, kissing up to the Condesce, who is actually having a difficult time not busting up into a giggle fit behind his hand. On the right side is his right-hand mer, elbowing him sharply in the side, attempting to keep him under control even as he himself loses control.   
Off to the left is the prince, your darling cousin-brother-whatever-the-fuck-it-is-that-he-is, who appears to be playing a game with Dave, his own right-hand mer, underneath the table.  
Time to wrap this piece of shit up so you can go to your room and sleep. Gog, sleeping underwater, you missed that so much.  
“The mission is going to continue into the next year, when the following school year begins. I will once again be assuming my identity as a student in the same university.”  
Cue the applause.  
Hell to the yeah.  
Once the applause stops, you leave the balcony from which speeches are given in the underwater kingdom. It feels odd to you, to be immersed in your own culture once more. In the world that you have spent the last year or so becoming used to, there are stages and podiums. Here you just kind of get a raised platform and have to project the fuck out of your voice, or use a spell to make sure it carries all the way around.   
It also feels strange to be speaking in your own language. Your mouth feels more accustomed to English at this stage. Coming back home is like trying to pack yourself into a mould. Like a square trying to fit its corners into the curve of a circle.  
The court alternately congratulates and commends you for your actions, as if you have been away to war or something. You presume that must be how it feels to them, since most of the mer population will never see dry land but from the shore. The number of mers who have actually gone and grown legs number among the low hundreds, if you had to guess.  
Finally, you make it out of the crush of well-wishers and otherwise, to the relative safety of your father’s side. He is exuding his ‘don’t touch me’ aura, which is about as powerful a deterrent as it is when a tentacle-beast squirts ink everywhere.  
Because you are public, you can’t throw yourself into his arms and weep for days, or pummel him, the way you want to. Yeah, you’re really torn on whether or not you want to hug him until he can’t breathe, being so glad that you are back and that you were sent up there in the first place (because Kankri- hell yeah, Kankri, your man), and wanting to pummel him until what serves as lungs in the mer species collapses as a punishment for banishing his son. Honestly, what was he thinking? What a dick.  
Eridan grabs you by the arm and swings around you, not caring that he is in the middle of public and not behaving with the decorum that a prince should behave.   
“Did Tentaboo help?” he chirps.  
Oh shit. That knitted bastard. That abomination you made for him to welcome him to the family. You popped that in your bubble and forgot about it for the most part, but now you’re going to feel obliged to pull him out of the bubble every night to give him the position of honour, next to your head on your pillow.  
“He sure did,” you grab him by either hand and dance him around. The crowd has thinned somewhat anyway, so it doesn’t matter as much anymore “How-v’s life been for you, little man? Gog, look at you, yer the size of a fuckin’ island!”   
“He’s not that big,” retorts Dave “He’s still small.”  
You tuck Dave under your other arm and give him a squeeze. Dave may not be a blood-relation, but you’re fond of the little shit anyway. He’s Dirk’s brother, after all, and that kind of makes him yours by pale association.  
“W-vere is Dirk, by the way?”  
“Huntin’ with Jake, I think.” says Eridan.  
“Huntin’,” you repeat “For the G-spot.”  
“What?” say the kids in unison.  
You had thought that your father wasn’t listening, but he now reaches over and smacks you on the back of the head. That’s probably going to bruise later. It’s been a long, long time since anyone was able to bruise you, so that would be kind of wonderful if it did really turn into a bruise.  
“Cronus,” his carefully trimmed fingernails bite into your shoulders “Is that an age-appropriate conversation to be starting?”  
You beam up at him “Probably not.”  
The smack and the scratch are the first actual contact you have had with your father since you left. Better than a hug, you think.  
Quickly, your father herds you and the kids out of the courtyard and into the hallways of the palace. From there, it is another small, bustling trip to the private royal chambers and here, you find your moirail.  
Frozen in the gold light that filters down from the surface, which does a fantastic job of setting off his blonde hair. He has a few more scars than the last time you saw him, but no new injuries for you to kiss better, which is kind of disappointing. You were looking forward to marching- no, swimming, now- over to your butch moirail and giving his boo-boo the sloppiest platonic kiss you could manage. The sentiment, of course, of stumbling over gender lines and roles would not be observed in the same way in this society, but the human influence on your sense of humour would have had you feeling delighted and scandalous.  
Dirk is asleep in one of the open-air foyers, with his hunting spear discarded at his side. He lies on a stone bench (strange to think that people on the upper-world use this for sitting, rather than lying out stretched like sun-bathers as Dirk is, now that you’re seeing a bench in the context of your home again) with a cushion spun from kelp under his head. Seeing him so unusually relaxed, you decide he deserves a much more loving and gentle greeting than the light punch to the stomach you are tempted to deliver.  
You mosey over, hoping that the kids will not follow you. They do, of course, but on Bro’s orders, maintain a respectful distance.  
Laying a hand on Dirk’s cool forehead, a shiver travels through your body. A shiver of a connection being re-joined- of a well -worn memory returning to the place in the world where it was spawned, to breed and multiply and grow more complex at your leisure.   
It’s so good to see him again.  
Dirk’s eyelashes flutter as he struggles back into consciousness.  
His eyes open up, and you are reminded, with little in the way of warning or preparation, of how goddamned orange his eyes are. Now that you have seen one in the real world, you could safely say that his eyes are as orange as a desert sunset, or as that eponymous fruit.   
And they light up at the sight of you, once he realises who it is that has leant over him. Without a word, he wraps his strong, scarred arms around your neck and pulls you in for a hug. A rumble of contentment vibrates in his chest and jumps into yours, the way a cold hops among human populations.   
His lips are next to your ears when he whispers “’Bout fucking time you came back.”  
You grin “Oh my Gog, is that really the first thin’ yer gonna say to me after all this time? And how-v come you didn’t pick me up at the beach?”  
Dirk’s face grows guilty “Uh, I was gonna, but Bro found out that I hadn’t slept in two days. That’s why he went instead.”  
You thumb gently at the giant bags underneath his eyes “W-vhy the hell not? Missed me too much?”  
He glowers.  
“Oh my Gog, really? That’s really why you were awake for tw-vo fuckin’ days?”  
“What’s with your voice? You sound so human right now.”  
“Do I?” you put a hand over your mouth, as if that is going to change the way you speak or solve the problem “Of course I do. I w-vas up there for almost a year.”  
“I don’t want to know if you-”  
“I did,” you waggle your eyebrows at him- a gesture which you are famous for, among your friend circle, and which he hates so much that it makes him bust up into compulsive, little girl giggles every time you do it “I got laid. I’ll tell you all about it when the juniors are in bed.”  
The day wanes into a comfortable night. You spend the time with your family, the way you have ached to for years. Jake turns up only a half hour after you and Dirk are reunited, and is perfectly happy to sit off to the side while you sit in Dirk’s lap and admire the way his short hair is constantly on the move, the way the wind will play with Kankri’s hair in the upper-world.  
The boys want to know everything, of course, and so do their fathers, though they do not seat themselves at your tail and beg for more stories before you have had the time to regain your breath from the last one. Your father’s eyes are trained on you as you deliver your anecdotes. Every now and then, he gives Eridan his hands to play with (Eridan likes to count the rings and spin them around on the fingers, which are each almost the size of his toddler’s forearm) or he will lean over to Broderick to whisper something, but he almost never looks away from you.  
Never grows bored. Never grows sceptical of your fantastical descriptions. Nothing much in the way of anything passes through his eyes, in fact, except for an unguarded relief and affection that you rarely see.  
Pride. He does not allow himself this vice very often- pride in his sons, as he works off the assumption that the two of you are going to fuck everything up at some point in your careers. If you don’t die before taking up his role as Condesce, then you’re probably going to be assassinated, either by Meenah in her frustration to be martially bound to such a jackass, or by Dirk, who will have let in some of your more violent enemies to be freed from the task of defending your high-maintenance ass.   
And if that doesn’t happen, because you for some reason don’t reach the throne, then Eridan will take over when he turns twenty (in human years, which is now how you think, instead of measuring by the slightly less accurate cycle of seasons) and proceed to wreck everything, because that is just how Eridan works. Your father is fond of announcing it, though not to the court who will be expected to whole-heartedly support their new Condesce, while bouncing Eridan on his knee. There is no doubt in his mind that one of his charges will be the down-fall of his kingdom, and he does not begrudge him for it.  
“So long as they clean up their mess,” he will always conclude, while ruffling the hair of the target of his derision “W-what the fuck do I care?”   
You are aching with desperation to talk to him alone, to make him explain why he sent you up there and the best thing that has happened to you (the thing that you won’t conceivably be able to report) that when Eridan and Dave start to yawn, you practically throw them towards the ‘coon they have been made to share since it was decided that Dave was to be Eridan’s right-hand mer.   
Jake senses your mood and departs, with a promise to bring John by tomorrow so you can see how much he has grown (which you suspect won’t be by that much, since Jake himself is still the size of a baby dolphin even though he is your equal in age), and he kisses Dirk, and he leaves. Dirk makes the excuse of tucking the boys in and Bro follows him, saying he’s going to tuck Dirk in, which is protested, but not completely refused. This leaves you and your father alone, for the first time in over a year.  
The two of you weren’t even alone when he told you you were going to the upper-world. He announced it in an off-hand, casual way in front of Meenan, Eridan and Dirk. Two of them immediately burst into tears at the proclamation, but you suspect Meenah’s were from the relief of not having to stage public appearances with you for a long time.  
“Where are they?”  
“Meenah and Feferi? I’m surprised you hav-ven’t asked already. They’re going to need to be kept out of the public eye for the time bein’.”  
Your pusher stutters in your chest “W-vhy? What’s happened?”  
Your father shrugs carelessly, belying the concern that he must be feeling “The cage has been shakin’, an’ you know-w what these folks get like w-when the cage gets to reminding them that it exists.”  
Grimly, you nod “Are they safe?”  
“Course. I’v-ve had about fiv-ve requests for their executions since this mornin’.”  
You wouldn’t mind so much if Meenah were executed, especially now that you have a candidate for a marriage that would not suffer the inconvenience of lovelessness, or the double-whammy of Meenah’s obnoxious personality. But Feferi? She is simply too cute to die.  
“Let’s fix that.”  
He cocks an eyebrow “How do you plan on doin’ that, son?”  
“Bring ‘em on out. Let’s take a walk to the cage. Folks see that the freshly returned son of the Condesce is gloatin’ ov-ver by the cage with his partner-to-be, then they see unity between the future rulers of the kingdom, right? Not the Sea Witch’s daughter hanging out with her mom.”  
Your father cracks a smile “Them humans made a shrewd little bastard out of you.”  
Feferi is overjoyed to see you. If you were on dry land, then she would have flown across her quarters into your arms. Even in the water, the blow of her landing is more than enough to knock you on your ass. While Feferi chants your name over and over again like a religious mantra, Meenah looks up with a fleeting disinterest and clicks her tongue at you, by way of a greeting.  
When you announce your intentions of an evening stroll and offer her your arm, she groans in disgust.  
You don’t push her, but instead, turn to Fef “Then perhaps the little heiress would hold my hand?”  
Feferi nods solemnly, and pushes her hair from her face “Of course, prince.”  
The two of you maintain a dutiful eye-contact for about two second before you’re both gurgling with laughter.  
On the way out, you notice one of the guards posted by the doors flashes Meenah an especially nasty look. Of course, you understand how they feel perfectly, but you make a mental note to have their duties rotated away from the room, so they will not be tempted to exercise their grievances with the heiresses on the actual heiresses themselves.  
Your father, waiting at the end of the corridor, decides to make the trip without an armed escort. After all, the Condesce cannot be seen to be a figure in constant need of protection. The presence of Bro and others like him just imply the constancy of protection. They are not the sole facilitators of your father’s safety. You have personally seen the man knock a giant squid unconscious with his bare hands, and that wasn’t even the most impressive thing he did that day.  
He notices Meenah’s tightly folded arms, pries one from her side, and assumes the posture of one who is enjoying a pleasant swim with his future daughter-in-law, rather than having to drag her stone-stiff, resisting body along through the water.  
Feferi is enraged to have missed story-time with the boys. You make a rather rash promise that she can relive the story hour with John tomorrow, as when you see him you have no doubt that you will be made to vomit forth the same anecdotes for his endless amusement. Since the passageways to the cage are all self-contained, heavily armoured subterranean affairs, you have no problem spewing secrets all over the place. The stuff you tell Feferi to keep her giggling is the kind of stuff that would send the mer court into an ecstasy of panic.  
“Wait, so they got these things that can level cities?” she repeats “Like, boom them to dust.”  
You nod “The most pow-verful ones are called ‘nuclear bombs’.”  
She furrows her brow “Well if they use those for their wars, don’t they just blow themselves up all the time?”  
“I guess so, Fef.”  
“But you went up there to study their warfare, right?”  
Your father jumps in “Shore he did, sweetie, but why do you want to know about that?”  
“’cos that shit could krill us all stone-floating dead, right?”  
He gives Meenah a look that suggests he would very much like to sign one of those warrants for her death that the public are clamouring for “Good thing you don’t have a Condesce that would allow-w that to happen.”   
“What you gonna do when they start dropping bombs on us?”  
“W-watch as they explode about fifty million feet abov-ve the city and laugh at the stupidity of it.”   
By the time you reach the cage door, Feferi knows a lot more about the human world than the scholars of humans will ever find out. Mainly, that’s because passage to dry land was expressly forbidden after a lot of mers were getting stuck up there, falling in love and making families, or becoming otherwise trapped in human lives. Security risk, and what not.  
So now, all of the learning on the subjects of humans is done from the relative safety of libraries, from old scrolls and books and illustrations that, now that you think about it, make humans look more like vegetables than bipeds. You’re going to have to make sure that Feferi gets a proper education in the sheer strangeness and sameness of her dry-land neighbours.   
The cage door does not look like the sole entrance to the prison of possibly the worst tyrant the under-water world has ever known. It looks more like the entrance to a small closet containing cleaning supplies, from the human world, or from your own world (the lines between them have become so blurred it is difficult to tell the difference), it would be attached to a child’s recupracoon.   
But at the same time, a definite, yet unknowable power radiates from the structure. It is perhaps only the size of a small whale, both on the inside and the outside, and the creature within it has very little room to move.  
This is one of the features of the punishment that your father designed for her. She is basically bent double in there, breathing stale water that has been filtered and cycled back through countless times, deaf to the noises from the outside world and unable to make any of her own, except when she dreams. That is where the rumbles originate from. When she dreams, she shakes her cage with the ferocity of her desire for vengeance against the whole royal family, for daring to trap her and punish her for her perceived crimes.  
Should she ever escape, then the very first thing she would do would be to eradicate the entire royal family. Next, their quadrants. Then, presumably, the whole city.  
To remind people of how fleeting existence is or how the city depends on your father or some other bullshit reason like that, your father has made the cage a part of the city’s basic infrastructure. Nothing is built on top of it of course- sometimes the rumblings are so strong that the buildings around it crack at the foundations, so that would be like trying to construct a block of apartments on top of a churning surf. The entrance is only accessibly from this angle, but there is a balcony wrapped around it. Not for people to stand on (who would try to stand on the tips of their fins?), but just to give people some idea of where they are allowed to go.  
It is here where you and your company emerge, from the carefully concealed exit to the passageway where the entrance is mounted. Of course, it would be a simple matter to bust through the wall if it were just a matter of finding the door, but to gain access, the intruder would also need your father’s blood and voice, as several passcodes are needed to get this far. When he recites them, you note that they have changed from the last time you visited here, which was just before you left.  
Once outside, you try not to feel the weight of the whole city behind you. At this hour of the night, there are still an excess of citizens to gather and stare. But at least they have the good sense not to start shouting or jeering at Fef and Meenah.   
As usual, Fef grows sour as soon as she nears the seamless skin of the cage. If she were a human child with those adorably useless feet, you imagine she’d kick the cage a couple of times.  
“The Sea Witch is evil.” Fef tells you with absolute conviction.  
“You got it.”  
“She’s like, the worst person ever right? If you were gonna put together a bunch of really bad people, then she’d win for being the biggest baddest person there, right?”  
“’Baddest’ isn’t a word, guppy.” says your father.  
“Yeah it is.” she retorts.  
“No it’s not.” he insists.  
“Yo, people, you know we are right in the middle ‘a the fucking public? Just chill an’ save it fer later.”  
They fall silent.  
After a moment, with a look of contemplation on her face, Feferi puts her chubby palm to the opaque surface of her mother’s cage.  
She looks up at you, her eyes wide “She’s staying in there, right?”  
You nod “You know how she got in there, right?”  
“I know that your daddy and John’s daddy and Dave’s daddy and Maryam all had to help seal this meanie away. Lotsa people had to die, then they had to strengthen it again, right? Just a little while ago.”  
Two years ago “Yeah, that’s right. She’s gotta stay in there.”  
“What keeps her in there?”  
“Blood and magic.”  
“Blood and magic,” repeats Feferi with an air of satisfaction “Blood and magic.”

College!Cronus: age five or so years =============>  
Current!Cronus: Greet Porrim ===========>

Your name is Cronus Ampora, and you knew that Porrim wasn’t really a human.  
Well, no, no you didn’t and the sight of her swimming up to you is beyond confounding, but there’s a part of you that’s just too fucking tired of the world that took your husband away to care about who’s doing what right now.  
Porrim swims up from the carpet of gloom that lies at the bottom of the ocean. Her skin exudes a faint, greenish aura that reminds you painfully of Maryam.   
It occurs to you that you have never wondered why her name is Maryam as well. Down here, it is a common enough name- like Jones in the human world. But up there? You’re pretty sure that name doesn’t exist. She must have had some kind of glamour drenching her for the entire time that you were around her, to keep her identity concealed.  
And still, you don’t even have the energy to be surprised.  
“Jesus, Cronus,” she gasps, when she draws close “I thought you were her.”  
You glance above, at the shadow unfurling over you “You thought that was my shadow?”  
She nods.  
Overhead, the sail of a ship has just blown loose from whatever riggings it was attached to. The sail is too large to belong to a sailboat, so some kind of old, historic galleon must be getting pulled to a junkyard or a museum.  
Now that you think about it, the shadow does kind of look like hair.  
“Where is my father?”  
Porrim grins “I can’t tell you that, but I can do you one better.”  
At this point, she is interrupted by a shout from down below.  
Someone asking in a kind of clumsy approximation of your language, as if they are not used to its noises on their tongue yet, asking for Porrim “Hey! Are you alright up there?”  
After that voice strikes your ears, you just kind of lose all conscious control of your body. Close to the start of the gloom, you see a speck of red glowing out against it.  
Couldn’t be.  
This isn’t making sense, is it?  
But as previously established, you don’t fucking care.  
The speck of red has freed itself from the rock it was hiding underneath, and has begun to swim up to meet you.  
Once he gets close enough for you to make out the dumfounded grin on his face and recognise that, yes, that is really him, you speed up, throwing caution to the wind and then yourself into your husband’s arms.  
“I thought you were dead.” you manage “I thought she had you.”  
“She did, but not anymore.”   
He kisses you, then, and you forget about where you are completely.  
It is just the two of you hanging in space, with tails where legs used to be, with nothing to separate your bare skin so he can feel the ridge of every scar pressing into him and you can feel the little craters of bruise where his skin yields, wilts against yours, and his hair still someone manages to smell like grass and a sea-breeze even leagues upon fathoms underwater.  
And for one single second of silence, except for the sound of his hammering pulse, everything is right in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there they are. Back together again, our boys. Hopefully this time it'll be until death do they part


	33. Maryam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introducing Dualscar Ampora. For some reason, his name has been shortened to 'Cary', because why not

Be: Cary Ampora, several days earlier than the last chapter =========>  
Cary Ampora: make this old crone see sense

Your name, rather unexpectedly, is Dualscar Ampora.  
Cary, for short, but the only mers with the gall to call you Cary would be your immediate circle of family and friends, because they know they are permitted to test their boundaries a little further before they discover them and are smote.   
So, Cary Ampora, Condesce of the underwater city, the Sburb as it was once referred to in the ancient times, what the hell do you think you’re doing, wandering off into the salty wilds of the ocean plains when your lone, remaining son is at risk and your entire kingdom is burning?  
First off, you are the fucking Condesce and anyone who would dare speak to you like that without permission would not be doing much more talking, as they would find their head jammed swiftly up their own nook, where it would remain for several hours before (if) you consented to forgiving their transgression and extracting the head from the genitalia.   
Secondly, Eridan is safe. You put him on the shore, after all, and the town in which you have relocated your son is the safest one you know, for the presence of the pack of lunatics with which you once saved the world. Though your working schedule does not often permit such an excursion, you have gone up there enough times and spoken with your friends enough to determine that they have all returned by now. To spawn a series of children that look remarkably like their parents, and whose births were eerily synced to the same year, in two batches. Coinciding almost exactly with when you had Cronus and then adopted your nephew on as a son- Eridan, the safe one.  
You were talking about how safe he should be, weren’t you? Well, yes, no, totally, he should be utterly safe. Those are good people that you have entrusted him to. If you instincts are correct, then he will go first to the other half of that wiggler-hood romance he thought was so sneaky; Psiimon’s weedy, lisping son, Sollux Captor. If he can just get to Psiimon himself, then he should be relatively safe. You can’t pretend that you’re happy that Lezlee, who is your favourite human and therefore the one you trust the most, has absconded from what once happened in this town and taken his youngest son with him, but you know that your own, other son is living there right now too.  
Cronus, and his husband, Kankri.  
Who’d’a thunk it? They finished what you and Lezlee could have started, almost started, then abandoned and never spoke of again.  
It sucks that Cronus had to abdicate his throne by way of faking his death, but it’s kind of worked in your favour, because now you have a place on the dry land to stash your stuff. Your sons, you mean, your sons.  
But that doesn’t answer the question, does it, Cary Ampora? The question of what you think running off in your kingdom’s darkest hour will accomplish? Answer that one, please, and do it now.  
Pushy much?  
Well, what you hope to accomplish by ‘running off’, as it was so coldly put, in your kingdom’s hour of desperate need, is retrieving the greatest hero your kingdom has ever known. Though her part in the saving of the mer city was largely exaggerate to cover up the fact that there was also a pack of humans with fake mer-tails helping her. She’s still a key member of what you hope to make a quick, clean rebellion.  
Your plan, as it stands, is to kill the Condesce and be done with it. When their creator is dead, the Golems will fall to pieces, dead. The only kinds of magics that have lasting effects after their casters are dead are blood-seals, and only then because someone has already had to have died to…seal…the deal, as it were.  
And now you’re chuckling at your own inner-dialogue for the most inappropriate reasons and in the most inappropriate place.  
Where are you, right now?  
Good question. You’re outside a cave. Caves, by definition, are giant holes in rock, and holes are not technically supposed to have doors which can shut them off from the rest of the world. So, really, Maryam has not shut you out of her cave. It’s more like a hollow tube in the face of the shelf of rock, so low down in the gloom that she is basically in the next zone of the ocean, and at least a half fathom beneath where the city would be.  
It’s freezing cold down here. Now, the cold, as a rule, generally doesn’t bother your kind of blood. Purple bloods were initially designed, before the spectrum of bloods became united and civilised, to live in the depths of the ocean, so your body is designed to handle this kind of cold. Really, you’re only aware that it’s nook-freezing cold because you have spent most of your life bouncing around in the warm water.   
“Maryam,” you say sharply, aware of the yawning darkness behind you, where the only light are pinpricks produced by the bodies of twisted creatures you would not want to face without your spear (which you already lost fighting a giant tentacle-beast to get here) “I know we didn’t part on the best of terms and I don’t give a shit. This is far too serious a problem to allow our petty personal grudges to get in the way.”  
From behind the rough stone wall, her age-rough voice rasps back “I’m too old for this.”  
“You’re not that old.”  
“I know what the world looked like was no land.”  
“Mer, you just had a fucking son about forty years ago.”  
“…that is beside the point.”  
“And a daughter twenty five years ago.”  
“That is also beside the point. Rearing fry and saving the world are two very different things.”  
“You do know that your son and your daughter live in this world too, right? So if the world falls under the control of the Sea Witch then they’re going to suffer as well. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if your children are the first to go, and Lezlee’s children.”  
“Don’t speak his name,” she growls “You do not speak of my son, you scum.”  
A familiar pain tugs at his chest as he thinks of the fleeting attempt at being together that he and Lezlee endured, and how closely monitored it was by Maryam. She was the very definition of that quaint human term ‘helicopter parent’, back in the days when she cared to remain in contact with her children.  
After Lezlee returned to the land, Maryam left the city for good, presumably to go to this place. No one ever knew. In fact, the next form of contact that anyone would have from her since she helped to save the world would be the arrival of a young Porrim, with a spear in her hand and a note in a satchel that read in her mother’s handwriting: ‘I made this. My daughter. Treat her well’.  
And then, of course, Porrim became a hero of the city, until she too disappeared at the tender age of what would be a human’s seventeen years, apparently sick of the water and the life it entailed.  
“Listen, Maryam, he is beyond that mess. He has two sons.”  
“I know that!” she snaps “I was there when they were born! You think my daughter, Porrim, she left the sea and left her home! She was born on the land! She was going home!”  
Your head spins “Ok, I can see that you don’t want to see reason. I’m afraid my only choice is to break down the door.”  
She scoffs “That door is a foot thick. Do your worst.”  
You draw a single fist back and strike the middle of the door. Cracks web out and great chunks begin to fall away. One particularly large one spirals down toward the black, revealing Maryam’s face.  
She is unimpressed, but you suspect the scorn is directed at herself for not realising that you’re the Condesce for a reason. Because you’re strong, not because your ass looks good on the throne.  
“Move yourself out of the way, or I’m going to end up hurting you as well.”  
She sniffs at you “Your fist is bloodied.”  
The look on your face must be fierce, because she backs away without further comment.  
Rather than punching the shit out of the door again, you seize the jagged edges of the hole you have made, your torn knuckles stinging, and rip it in half as you would rip a piece of paper. Maryam lurks at the back of her sparsely furnished cave, her arms crossed in a very human gesture of displeasure and defiance.  
So transported by rage at this woman are you, that you can’t speak for a minute. You just linger in the doorway you have just made, your chest heaving with the effort of inhaling the screams you want to- need to- unleash upon this stubborn old fucker.  
“Why are you still here?” you finally manage “Why aren’t you helping us?”  
Maryam shrugs carelessly “I believe I have given far more than enough of myself to your people, Cary Ampora. Most of them are dead anyway.”  
“Your children are among those.”  
She shakes her head “Porrim and Lezlee are both safely on dry land.”  
“You think so?”  
For the first time, a hint of doubt creeps into her stubborn glower “Are you under the impression that my son is dumb enough to return to the sea after what he went through at your side?”  
Used to be that any and every mention of Lezlee was a stab of pain straight to your pusher. That, with your affection for the flailing joke of a man, has dulled off to a vague memory over the years. Now, it is like being reminded of a bug bite that still kind of itches, underneath all of the ointments and salves you have smeared over it over the years to dull the sensation.  
You still don’t appreciate being reminded, however, of its existence.  
“I don’t know, Maryam, but from what I understand there has been a substantial amount of damage incurred on the surface world. The Sea Witch visited a rain on them that has not been seen since the days of Pompeii.”  
Maryam waves a wrinkled hand dismissively “I know, I know. And I also know that I would know if my children or their family had been injured in any way.”  
With a flick of your tail, you plunge yourself into the relative gloom of the cave. Apparently, Maryam’s own bioluminescence is sufficient lighting for her. Yours adds to the mix, and the room is bathed in colours that seem to be in conflict.   
“I took a risk in doing this.”  
“Doing what?”  
“Retrieving you.”  
“You’re not retrieving me.”  
You nod wearily “So you say, but I am not willing to accept that.”  
“What do you intend to do, then? Sit in my house until I accompany you back into the horror of blood and fire and war?”  
“Impressive description. Yes, Maryam, that is exactly what I expect you to do.” You cast a disparaging glance around the room “And this is not much of a house, or a block, or even a closet, if I may say so.”  
“I did not invite you to say so, but I am resigned to your opinions, I suppose.”  
It takes all of your self-control not to smite this ridiculous mer.  
How can she allow herself to act so callous and off-handed while her fellows are dying in every direction and every violent manner that could possibly be conceived? What kind of maniac do you have to be, what kind of detached, deluded whacko thinks that when they possess the kind of power that Maryam possesses, they are permitted to sit back on their tails in a time of crisis? Gods know you must look that way at this stage- it has been almost a day and a half since you left your city, since it was razed and burnt.   
(Burnt; that still feels strange to think about. Fire was never really a concern of yours in the city before, and yet, somehow the Sea Witch found the power to bring it down on you)  
It’s going to take almost as long as that to get back, depending on how quickly Maryam can be persuaded to swim. You have yet to eat or sleep since your flight from your city. This, in itself, is not all that stressful for a mer of your power and age, but the emotional side of it? You haven’t had a moment of mental rest since you spat Eridan up on dry land.  
All you can think about is losing your other son.  
Well, ‘losing’.  
Cronus isn’t dead, but you’re sure that Eridan is going to find some way to remove himself from your life. Perhaps not on purpose. It can, and most likely will, happen all the same. His little friend. That scrawny, blond thing that Psiimon spawned. He’s not the type for capturing pushers, you would hope, otherwise it’s going to be as easy to lose Eridan as you have always feared.  
“Maryam, is there anything I can say to you that’s going to convince you to come back?”  
She stiffens her posture, so that not so much as the tip of a fin sways in the sea-breeze “I believe I have given enough of myself.”  
“The responsibility you have as a hero-”  
“Is long forsaken. I gave to you my daughter to act in my stead as the champion of our people, should we have needed one.”  
You are growing frustrated again, in spite of yourself, with her refusal to see what is really important outside of her own needs “And she left too.”  
“Well that was her decision.”  
“Just as this is your decision? To refuse us help in our darkest hour?”  
“This is hardly the darkest. That is past you, now. The thing to do is leave and let the Sea Witch take as she wishes.”  
You can hardly believe the words that have just left her mouth. In fact, you would prefer it if she had just opened her mouth and let loose a high-pressure stream of vomit into your face and knocked you all the way out of the cave.  
Did she really just suggest that to you? A former hero of your people just told you that what little remained of your people were better off fleeing without resistance, then attempting to oppose her?  
“What? Have I disillusioned you, my dear?”  
The look on her face is almost caring and kind- the kind of look that a parent concerned for their child gives.  
You draw back your fist and strike her across the jaw. Though nothing breaks, there is a satisfying crack that tells you that she will at least be suffering for however long it will take her to heal herself.  
Maryam’s head snaps back fast enough to give her whiplash and she is thrown the length of the room, stopping just short of crashing into the opposite wall. The entire time, she grins, her teeth green with blood.  
“You,” the words do not want to come- they can’t around the thick knot of anger in your throat “You are a fucking disgrace to your former self…if…if you could just be that which you once were, when we fought alongside and see yourself like this? An old, isolated mer who lives without contact or dignity? Who would rather stay in her- her cell! Rather that, then stand up for the people who still enshrine her?”  
“Well perhaps,” she wipes the blood from her lip with her knuckles and flicks it into the water “It is time you allowed me to step off the podium you’ve stuck me on. Go home, Dualscar. You cannot afford to waste much more time on me if you want to get far away enough. Start afresh, alright? Leave behind all that cannot be carried, and that includes my myths and my legends, and don’t look back, or you should see some horrible things done by the Sea Witch’s hands.”  
“You- you know she’s going to wreak havoc. How can you let her?”  
For the first time, a flash of anger flits through her old eyes “Because I know full well there is no way to stop her! Why should I throw my life to the cause for the sake of- of keeping up appearances? Your request is as vain as it is selfish! Now leave me in peace!”  
“You must know of some way to kill her!”  
“In all of my battles with the Sea Witch, you would think I would have already done so if it was possible. The fact of the matter is that it’s not. She is not the kind of creature to die. She simply will not die. I am sorry, Cary, I really am,” although her face does not suggest she is anything but eager for him to leave at this point “But her freedom and the survival of your race are mutually exclusive events. And now that freedom is hers? There’s no way to take it back.”  
At this, you make a decision.  
You turn your back on her “Then I’ll put her back in her cage.”  
Maryam scoffs “And how will you do this? I needed an entire army to pin her down, and the help of that collection of rag-tag lunatics you scrounged from the surface. You’ve got little more than a fraction of a fraction of those numbers left, and you know how it is with humans. The second time they assume the enchantment of the tail, the enchantment is permanent. They are not like our kind. Their bodies cannot handle shape-shifting.”  
“I don’t know if I’m willin’ to stick around to speculate as to how I’m going to accomplish this impossibility,” you throw her one last, cold look over your shoulder “If you must be certain of one success that will come from this, be sure of your own. I only know where you are because Porrim told me, and she would never give up that information even if she were under pain of death. Not to anyone she didn’t trust. You’re going to be undisturbed, Maryam. Whatever happens to me and my sons and your children, you won’t have to hear about it. You won’t have to hear about a single thing that happens to our race from this point on. Be certain of that.”

 

Cary Ampora: become your son, Cronus Vantas==========>  
Cronus Vantas: hold your man ============>

Your name is Cronus Vantas and, distantly, you hear the strained stage-whisper of John asking: “Oh, are they matesprits?”  
Yes, John, they are matesprits, you think, and we are so in love with each other that we felt it necessary to get the law involved so that neither of us could run away. The concept of marriage would be laughable and alien to your people, being the monogamous and government-restricted thing that it is. A society that naturally participates in love-squares rather than triangles and does not recognise gender lines would be bewildered to meet one that promotes strict, romantic monogamy and prefers not to allow it between members of the same gender.  
And while these complex internal political commentaries occur in a small bubble of rationality located somewhere in the back of your head, the rest of you is too busy singing to notice anything but the fact that Kankri is here.  
Kankri is in your arms.  
It’s been something like 20 chapters, but you got him the fuck back.  
Your husband’s alive, and most importantly, back in your grasp.  
He feels feverishly hot. Now, this might just be the fever of your own relief and joy seeping into his skin, or it might be the sudden violent contrast of your now freezing skin. Feels good to be back in a cold skin- natural, even if enjoying it seems like betraying Kankri in some way.  
“I don’t know about you,” Kankri mutters into your ear “But I’ve had a fucker of a couple of days down here.”  
In spite of the situation, you crack up “Language, Kanny!”  
With your foreheads pressed together and your arms tight around each other, there’s barely an inch of space to catch your breath, which doesn’t bother you at all.  
You’ve got him back and as far as you’re concerned, he’s going to stay close to you, attached to you, until you are both back in dry-land.  
“We need to talk,” he says, suddenly serious “Uh, I know how the Sea Witch got out.”  
“I do too.”  
“Meenah?”  
“How…how is it that you know?”  
He squares his shoulders, the way he does when something has made him deeply uncomfortable “I was in the cage with her.”  
Your pusher thumps “The cage is still functional? I thought she-”  
Dave materialises at your elbow “Well me and Porrim had to punch a giant hole in it.”  
You may still be basking in the glory of having your husband back (or course you are; it’s only been about 10 seconds since you got him back), but you’re pretty pleased to see Dave. So you quickly let go of Kankri’s waist with one hand and ruffle Dave’s hair, which has grown a lot thicker and a lot blonder since when you saw him last.  
“Hey, you,” you grin “You got big, didn’t you?”  
He grins back and brushes your hand away “Geddof. This is serious.”  
“Yes, this is serious,” agrees Porrim “We need to take cover. We need to get back to the camp.”  
Swimming up from the hiding place to join you, the first thing that John does is glower and scoff “What for? To count the dead?”  
Porrim shoots him a filthy look “There are survivors there, I am sure.”  
“I wouldn’t stick around.” retorts John.  
You notice there is a giant blue gash open on his palm, which has been hastily bound with a scrap of sea-weed. Still, it weeps into the water, sending little blue marbles of blood out in a light trail every time John moves his hand.  
“Well, John, it doesn’t matter what you would do, because the survivors do not all share that special Egbert mentality.”  
“Pardon me, but the Egbert mentality is allegedly optimism and I am clearly suffering from a bad dose of reality, here. Pessimism.”  
Porrim’s hand, too, is cut wide open, as is Dave’s.  
You’ve got the pieces, and now they begin to come together.  
Of course. What you have in front of you is Porrim, Porrim Maryam, and an Egbert and a Strider. The three who conducted the blood sacrifice that strengthened the blood seal in the years past. A member of each bloodline, sharing the same whatever-it-is in the blood that allowed the first seal to be strengthened. When blood belonging to those who originally made the seal comes into contact with the seal, it is weakened for a moment. Permeable, as it were, to an infusion of strength that could fuel the seal for years to come, or to weakness that could rip it apart.  
Evidently, Meenah didn’t go through the motions necessary to somehow trick or abduct a Strider, a Maryam and an Egbert on her own. There is no doubt in your mind that if she knew that a Maryam still existed, underwater or on dried land, she would have made it a personal mission to get a sample of blood from Porrim rather than using the key.   
Still, it sends a pretty fucking powerful message, doesn’t it? To use the instrument which was entrusted to her by your father. A bold move by him, and a wounding response by her.  
You doubt he’s ever going to forgive himself for enabling the genocide Meenah must have initiated.  
You’re never going to forgive Meenah for doing what she has done, even though you have barely begun to see it. All you know is the sea-breeze is absolutely laden with the scent of blood and death and fire. Fires underwater.  
God. Gog. Gods.  
How could she do this, the Sea Witch? How did she have the power to do this, or the gall, or the willpower to just take a society in her hands and crush it to dust between her palms?  
You’re going to kill her.  
And if you can’t do that? You’re going to put her back in that cage and throw the cage into the deepest part of the ocean you know.  
Porrim leads you and the others back to the same place they were hiding, when you arrived.  
It’s just a piece of rock with a sizeable shelf underneath it where you can hide. Not much at all in the way of defence, but it’s better than hanging out in the open water, waiting for something to spot you.  
Porrim is about to speak when the whine of a beast’s call echoes up from the wall of shadow that begins only a few feet down from your shelf.  
His breath hitching, Kankri draws closer to you. You wrap an arm around his shoulders and murmur “It’s ok. That thing won’t hurt us, it’s just calling its child back. Think of parents at a park. You know when they have to call about fifty times to get little Timmy off the slide or the monkey bars? That noise was the same thing.”  
Kankri relaxes in your arms, but his eyes keep darting over to the darkness. His mer senses must run a little deeper than you initially thought, even this early in his transformation, because he is perfectly justified to feel threatened by that noise. It is not the call of a carer, summoning its child.  
John and Dave are tensed up too, and unconsciously pressed closer together in a way that tells you a matespritship is not that far off (assuming they can survive this, their children will be beautiful). They recognised the hunting call for what it is.  
When beasts communicate, it is generally to ask for sex. To make others aware that the beast is ready for sex, or has recently had sex and wants to brag about it, or warning smaller beasts that sex is about to occur and they better stay away if they know what is good for them. So when a beast lets out a cry that is not in direct reference to sex in some way, then something big is going down.  
That hunting call? Used when beasts of many species are coming together.  
So in a way, it is a summoning call. But for an army as opposed to calling a stray child back.  
The Sea Witch must be exercising her dominion over the sea’s creatures now. This makes you very glad that you have all squeezed underneath the rock.  
“Porrim, where’s my father?”  
Surprisingly, she shrugs “I don’t know. No one does. No one has seen him since the city was attacked.”  
“He- he ran?”  
“No, Cronus, I think he’s looking for my mother. Maryam. Your grandmother, Kankri.”  
Dave cocks an eyebrow “Wait, I thought he was your brother?”  
“Brother, nephew, same difference.”  
“What’s a nephew?” asks John.  
“See,” she says to Kankri “They don’t have the same family structures as us. I just used the first word I could think of about families to explain it.”  
“Excuse me, but I know what a nephew is-”  
She covers Dave’s mouth.  
Kankri, however, is not about to be silenced “Porrim if you are going to claim some kind of family or blood relation on me, then I would appreciate it if you did so in a more…a more appropriate setting. You understand that it is a very…well, shitty, a shitty thing to do to a person to just suddenly spring a claim of kinship on them underneath a rock, in front several perfect strangers (the boy are, of course, offended) so I would not….well I’m not very happy about that. My grandmother is a charming octogenarian who lives in my world, thank you very much.”  
“Oh yeah? How much contact have you really had with her?”  
“I saw her for two weeks every summer of my life.”  
Porrim rolls her eyes “And how much did you talk to her apart from that?”  
“Well, not often, but she enjoys her privacy-”  
“To the extent that she lives in a hole in an obscure coastal shelf where she doesn’t have to see us.”  
Your pusher, once again, makes some kind of dizzying acrobatic manoeuvre in your chest “Uh, maybe we shouldn’t talk about Maryam-”  
“Rosa,” corrects Porrim “My mother’s name is Rosa Maryam and I see no reason not to discuss her now. The people that would seek to do her harm by kidnapping her or whatever, they’re all dead in the water. Floaters. We’d have seen her by now if she’s going to help us at all.”  
“So what, we can’t expect any help at all from her?” Dave’s eyes have become wide with fear. He’s still a child, despite what he has recently been through and the way he was brought up besides, so at least some small part of him still naturally expects good from everyone.   
It frightens him to think that the hero of his childhood would not continue to be a hero into his teenage years, especially in his world’s darkest moment.  
“No, Dave.” Says Porrim shortly “Whatever we find when we go back to the camp is what we got.”  
“Then we got a lot of corpses.” Says John flatly.  
Kankri’s hand tightens in yours.  
You’re about to turn to him, to offer him whatever comfort you can, when the whine sounds again. This time, it is louder, and quickly followed by a current of freezing water.  
Gasping, Dave doubles up on himself. His phosphorescent specks flare in an effort to keep him warm. Somehow, Kankri knows to gather up the only other warm-blooded mer into his side to conserve and share their warmth, while their cold-blooded friends don’t so much as shiver.  
From the dark, rises a spear-shaped head.  
One part of your mind thinks tentacle-beast, and the other thinks giant squid.  
Following it is a bloom of jellyfish, whose organs flash under transparent skin, and whose tentacles trail behind them for metres and metres. You can’t even remember your people’s word for them, nor can you begin to list all of the species you see following the squid to the surface.  
“They shouldn’t be able to survive different pressures,” mutters Kankri in your ear “Won’t they die, soon?”  
At this moment, you love him so much for stubbornly trying to apply scientific logic to this moment, where he has a tail in the place of a leg and is holding a mer child in an effort to keep him from withering in the sub-sub-zero waters that all manner of deep-sea dwelling beasts are bringing up with them.  
It is Porrim who answers, while you smile at him like an idiot “Nope. So long as these things stay in the water, they’re under the Sea Witch’s protection.”  
It looks like about half of the deep sea is pouring up towards the surface, after that first, pioneering squid.  
You can’t say that you’re looking forward to the day you’re about to have.  
“Let’s go,” urges Porrim “They’re not going to notice us. All they want to do right now is get to their master.”  
“Stay close,” you say to Kankri, and to the kids, to a lesser extent “We’re not losing anyone on the way back, alright?”  
“Why the hell not?” asks John, his face pained “It’s not like there’s anything to go back to.”  
Dave punches him in the shoulder “Hey, you bastard, I’m right here. You still got me no matter what.”  
The flicker of a smile passes over John’s lips, then disappears quickly. You realise with a sinking feeling that he has lost a quadrant. You don’t know if he’s had a kismesis since you left, but given the red tensions between him and Dave (which John doesn’t seem to notice), then you would guess that he had a pale quadrant filled until recently. Vriska- that is her name, the body Karkat and Equius found on the beach? It must have been Vriska’s.  
Now, your thoughts turn to Dirk.  
“Come on, Porrim, we’re wasting time.”  
And you swim away, into the open and parallel to the rising column of glaring, gape-mouthed fish and monsters alike, hoping against hope that your former moirail is still alive.


	34. What comes to the surface

Your name is Psiimon Captor, and after having what may have been your son’s first and current love abducted, you went back to work.  
Sollux is not the kind of person to listen to reason when he doesn’t want to hear it. If you tried to counter this stubborn, witless nature of his then you would have quickly gone insane, raising him, so you did not try to comfort or lecture him after Eridan had been taken a safe distance by Terezi. You’re his father. His mother has been off the scene for a long time. Even when she was alive, she wasn’t much help. A disabled son is not something that most mothers are hoping for when they give birth, and your wife never really recovered from the mental condition of her eldest child.  
When Sollux turned out similarly distant and cold towards people, she made her own diagnosis; her son was weird and, like the first, a disappointment because of it.  
She died out of spite, you think, leaving you to muddle through parent-hood to two boys who absolutely did not want to be raised to be normal all on your own.   
Sollux didn’t say a word to you as you left, so you returned the favour. The silent treatment? Fine with you. As long as he’s safe and he’s going to stay that way, then you can’t complain if he never speaks to you again.  
As long as your boy is safe.  
“Psiimon, I cannot fucking believe you.”  
“What?”   
You look up to see the foreman (forewoman, actually) with her hands thrown up in the air, inviting her small audience to scorn him along with her. Can you believe, people, her hands seem to say, what this guy thinks he can get away with.  
“Why didn’t you tell us about Sollux?”  
Your heart skips a beat “What about Sol?”  
Finally, you notice her face is not the livid expression that you would expect to go with the angry gesture “Why didn’t you tell us you needed to go see him?” instead, her face is soft and sympathetic “I didn’t know he was sick.”  
“Sick.” you repeat flatly.  
Ah. They must have made up their own explanation, as to your hasty disappearance from the docks. Earlier, when it occurred to you that you needed to go meet Terezi, you were going over the machinery and major structures of the dock to ensure that the thing was not about to collapse, after the rain, and that the rain had not wrought any damage on the stuff. You did find a few scraps of clothing caught in the gears of a crane, and when you tugged it out, you tugged out the neon jumpsuit that dockworkers wear to make sure they can be seen if they fall into the water.  
The whole thing, right out of the gears underneath the cab of the crane. You then noticed that one of the windows of the cab was rolled down, and must have been when the rain started. This explained the empty jumpsuit.  
There was no name-tag, so rather than make a big deal of out of the item, which belonged to someone who was most likely already on the list of the dead, you slung the suit over the side of a crate to make it look like a casually discarded item.  
Anyway, the way you ran off, they must have surmised that you were called by Sollux and had to go be with him for some reason.  
Sure, works for you.  
“Is he alright?” asks one of the audience of grizzled, hollow-eyed workmen (and women, and others) who managed to survive the rain “Your boy?”  
“Yes,” you lie “He’s alright. He’s staying at Kankri and Cronus’s house until things calm down.”  
The forewoman fans herself with her clipboard, which contains a comprehensive list of the workers and various other members of staff that were lost to the rains “I haven’t seen Kankri or Cronus around for a while. Are they alright?”  
“Yes…they’re just a little shaken.”  
“Cronus is a marine biologist. He must know what’s going on, right?”  
Your throat has begun to feel dry from the number of lies you have forced through it “He’s working on it right now. The rest of the members of staff were…indisposed by the rain.”  
People aren’t saying ‘killed’ by the rain, as though it would somehow seem crass. Or too honest.  
You can’t even remember the name of his team. All of them are dead, without exception. The woman was the first to be injured; the very first in the whole town, as far as you are aware, and apparently only Cronus had the sense to get out of the rain while the rest of his team did their best to figure out how to bandage the stump where a limb has literally been melted away.  
A heavy silence falls on the dock, and the audience goes back to their jobs.  
Their number has dwindled into the low dozens, whereas before there were at least two hundred working on the docks, coming in from the sea and going off to the shore, and it was easy to tell. Now, the number is barely big enough to fill a few rows of seats in a movie theatre.  
“Psiimon,” the forewoman approaches you “Can I talk to you about something?”  
The forewoman’s name completely escapes you, but you remember her for being a woman who is not easily scared. You have watched her evacuating the docks in storms, when the swells could have swept her away if the lightning didn’t fry her first, and bat not so much as an eyelash as the wrath of the gods rained down on her head.  
“What?”  
She nods towards one of the floating platforms in the water; the squares supported on foam that are attached to the docks of holiday homes, where people fish from or dip their legs in the water.  
As she descends the steps that lead onto it from the main jut of the dock, she leans heavily on the splintery banister. Her hands are trembling, as are her legs, which is making her jumpsuit rustle.  
“It’s…I don’t really know what it is, but I thought…I thought you might.”  
You nod to the boat tethered there, bobbing gently in the calm sea “Is something wrong with the engine?”  
To your surprise, she ignores the boat entirely and takes you to the edge of the dock. Getting to her stomach, she glances underneath the dock. When the forewoman straightens up, her face is pale and her lips quiver with the effort of keeping herself from puking.  
“I know you’re not a biologist. I’m just…I just need someone with a university degree, you know? I’ve always worked on the docks. Barely set foot out of this town all my life. I know the water, but I don’t know what the fuck this is.”  
Her tone unnerves you, but you lower yourself into place beside her. To any observers, it will look as if the forewoman is asking whether or not you think this dock is still a sound structure. Or, to the more morbid, that you are fishing out one of the vacated pieces of clothing that the melted dead shed all over the place.  
They would not be far off, if that was the nature of their assumptions.  
What she shows you is at first what you take to be a human. A human coloured grey as ash with blackened veins scrawled all over. Not a drowned body, you realise, but a body that is bloated with something. Salt, perhaps?  
It makes sense. There’s a dead mer underneath the dock.  
A single hand reaches out, swaying in the sea-breeze with the seaweed that grows on the underside of the dock. Its fingers are slashed open and bleeding sluggishly. Not really blood, but coagulated lumps of jelly. You realise, with a gut-churning flip of your stomach, that you have been seeing bloodspots of a variety like these all day. All week, maybe, but with the bloom of jellyfish that Cronus had mentioned studying before the rain, then you kind of just wrote off the blood as another type of jellyfish.  
Salt, coming back to the point about the salt. There must be some kind of internal filtration system, yes? Otherwise mers would be bloated with salt all the time, or something. It just stops working when they die, and this can be easily observed on the mer caught underneath the dock. Their body has been tangled up in the seaweeds and a stray, drifting net that is hooked around the edge of the dock.  
Unbidden, your mind bounces back to an image of Terezi, the first time you met her. Caught in a net, but very much alive, struggling, cursing in her own language and yours, and cutting into her wrists and whatever it is that mers have instead of ankles as she thrashed.  
There will be no getting this mer out of the snarl of the net. You’re not about to touch a dead body.  
About its genderless face is a cloud of white hair that moves like an anemone moves. Whenever the hair passes over the pale, bloodless face, there is the eerie illusion that life still lingers on. As if, those slashed and cracked lips, weeping minute globes, are about to move in a plea for help.  
“What do you want me to say about this?” you say flatly.  
She swallows hard “Something…something sciency, I guess. That’s a tail, isn’t it?”  
Yes, there is the shreds of a tail dangling from the mutilated body’s waist. You’re surprised that she managed to identify the body as non-human at all, but then again, the gills in the neck probably helped her.  
“Foreman! There’s something up out there!” calls one of the grunts from the docks.  
Eager to be away from her sickening discovery, the forewoman hops up and swats you on the shoulder, as a way to tell you to stay put. To mull the dilemma over.  
Well, a mer corpse. Maybe you shouldn’t have sent Eridan and Terezi back, but found a way to keep Sollux from seeing Eridan, while letting them linger near the shore? You can only hope that the two of them have made it safely to wherever their people are waiting, or you might not be able to forgive yourself for the choice you have made.  
“Psiimon! Get up here!”  
This time, she does sound angry.  
As you straighten up, you become aware of the fierce cacophony of flapping and shrieking, not that far from you. Looking out across the water, you see there’s a churning knot of birds of all manner diving around in the water, peppering the surface with splashes, or floating on the surface on tops of vague lumps you cannot identify from this distance.  
But you’ve got a good idea of what’s going on.  
“Body in the water!” shouts another of the grunts “I think it’s a swimmer!”  
“Jesus Almighty!” adds another “Where’s their fucking arm? Did it get bit off? Jesus, someone help them!”  
The forewoman hands you a pair of binoculars in disgust “I hope your lunch was a small one.”  
“I haven’t eaten.”  
Through the binoculars, you can see you were right.  
Corpses. A mass of them, all floating into each other, on top of each other, about each other, being carried slowly inwards by the gentle action of the ocean.  
Unlike you, the birds all over these mers care about their health and are attacking their lunches with gusto.  
“We need to get the beaches clear. Somebody call the FBI or something.” shouts the forewoman “They’re gonna need to hear about this shit!”  
And now you really are sure that you’re never going to forgive yourself.

 

Psiimon Captor: be Dirk Strider ============>  
Dirk Strider: mourn your losses ============>

Your name is Dirk Strider and, fuck that, you haven’t got the time to mourn when there the living need your attention.   
Besides, it’s not like you’re going to need to prostrate yourself and weep to properly mourn your people. Of course, mer culture would demand that you do, but it would also demand that you retrieve every last scrap of the corpses you can get your hands on to administer a proper burial; a sinking into the gloom of the bottom of the ocean.  
Nobody’s got time for that shit when the Sea Witch rages rampant.  
So far, no one has had a clear, confirmed sighting of her since she came and destroyed the refugee camp. Because, like, annihilating the entire city and most of its sizeable population wasn’t enough for her. She’s not only gotta chop the head of the snake, to use a bit of human terminology, but then she has to section the snake into tiny pieces and feed them to her guard beasts.  
What a jerk.  
On the bright side, Cronus is out of harm’s way, you hope. You heard there was some kind of poisonous rain falling on the upper world, all over the upper world, but your boy-he’s smart, kinda. Ok, he’s smart when he is forced to be. He may not be constantly on his guard for trickery and possible threats to his health, but that is only because that was your job for most of the life you spent together. He’ll be fine. Him and his weird human matesprit. Husband, or wife, or something. For some reason, they have gendered terms for their spouses. What a weird species.  
But, as you do not have the time to mourn, you also do not have the time to ponder the oddities of the human world. No, what you need to be doing right now is figuring out some way of delivering te small population you have left to some kind of safety.  
Not that that’s going to be a very difficult task.  
Ok, so the ocean is still lousy with Golems. And the Sea Witch has just recently unleashed a hunting call and now almost every withered, limping nightmare you have ever had is now slithering out of the deep to heed her demands for an army. Those things are still drifting overhead even as you’re trying to invent a way to escape. The tendrils of the stinger-beasts in particular are a cause for concern. They reach so far and are almost transparent in the light, so it is difficult and sometimes impossible to tell where the beast starts and their train ends. Luckily, no one has swam into the beasts yet. You’re all staying very close together and watching carefully for anything that looks like it might kill you, if it has the chance or the proper provocation.  
“I say we just hide in a bubble until it’s over.”  
“Yes, we know what you say, Jake, and it’s not a viable option.” you say, for about the fifteenth time.  
Jake has grown increasingly exasperated, but not with you. With the condition of the world in general. He is in desperate need of a nap, and there’s going to be no chance of that until you are out of the reach of the Sea Witch. And that’s gonna take a long time.  
Apart from Jake, there’s Tavros and Terezi and Eridan, all of whom are still too young to legally imbibe or join the army. In human years, they would be about 17 years old, for Eridan and Tavros, and 16 for Terezi, who is a season younger than Dave. Her moirail.  
Eridan has been unconscious in your arms for a while now. The moment Terezi showed up in the camp, only about ten minutes before the entire thing was sacked by an army of Golems that would not be reasoned with and could not be stopped, you took Eridan from her. Yes, you are aware that he’s not actually Cronus, no matter how strong their resemblance is (especially for cousins), but you are also aware that he is the closest you have to Cronus at this moment in time.  
So, he’s getting cradled, gog-dammit, at least until Dave replaces him. Assuming that Dave is still alive.   
And Tavros is one of those poor bastards who lost his brother to the human world. His father died in the wars, and his brother wasn’t far behind. Rufioh was scooped up in a fishing net and has never been seen since. Tavros entertains no illusion of a reunion. At this stage, he can barely remember what his brother looked like.  
Unlike Jake, Tavros has remained startlingly pragmatic, especially for a child of his age. You thought he would want to charge in and shed some blood and go out in a blaze of glory. Instead, he is making all kinds of sense with his shy suggestions of escape.  
“Uh, I know the rest of the cities kind of…of hate us, but we could make them…see reason, I guess? Um, I know the reasons, um, one of them, that the cities don’t like each other is that- that they’re all afraid that letting some of us in will be like letting all of us in and their culture will be deaded. Uh, I mean killed. Diluted. Something like that, right?”  
Terezi is holding his hand. As near as you can figure, she just wants the comfort of another body next to hers, but is unwilling to cuddle up to him completely. You’re not even sure how well they know each other? Tavros is one of those kids who was always underfoot as he was growing up, for a friendship with Dave and John, and even Feferi, which has survived into their teenaged years. Still, Terezi does not seem to want to be obvious about how badly she needs the comfort of another mer beside her. Her eyes are aimed at the ground, though her contributions are substantial.  
“I want to wait for Dave before we do anything.”  
“How do we know they’re coming back?” counters Jake “I’m sorry, Terezi, I know how you feel. John is my only living family and I want more than anything to wait for him…I just don’t know how we’re going to find them.”  
Tavros pipes up “Well, we can’t, um, we can’t wait around here and hope they’re gonna find us. This place is- this place isn’t even really a place. We’re just sitting in a big-ass anemone.”  
This is true.  
Anemones don’t sting mers, but they sting the shit out of anything else that comes within reach of its wafting tendrils. Thusly, you are now sitting in a giant, deep-sea anemone and watching the Sea Witch’s army collecting itself.  
“What do you think that army is for, Tav?” you point towards a large tentacle-beast with a beak that could snap you in half.  
“Uh, destruction?”  
“Destruction of what?”  
“Of…of…I don’t…” he trails off, and Terezi squeezes his hand absently.  
“The other cities.” you finish for him “So we have two options. Either we can swim as fast as we can and warn the other cities, and maybe, just maybe they’ll listen to us and they’ll survive, but I don’t think so. You know our Condesce is the best in the world. That’s not an inflated sense of duty to the city speaking to me, either, he just is. But other Condesces aren’t so…so forward-thinking. You know how many of them would have killed the legacies of the Sea Witch’s rule?”  
“Well maybe he should have.” mutters Terezi.  
Tavros shakes his head and says, without a hint of malice “No, ‘cos then we wouldn’t have Feferi. I…I don’t like what Meenah did at all. I never liked her, uh, all, all that much at all, but I liked Feferi. Do you think she’s dead?”  
“I don’t know, Tavros,” you say honestly “Eridan was supposed to be dead, and now here he is. Just hope that she isn’t.”  
“Hope against hope.” adds Jake.  
You are beginning to grow irritated with him “Jake, that’s really no a helpful mentality to have in this situation.”  
“Helpful mentality?” he repeats “I’m sorry I’m not flourishing in these circumstances,” he jabs a finger at the churn of beasts overhead “But there’s kind of a bloody end-of-everything army assembling over our heads! How much positivity do you want out of me, exactly?”  
Before you can find an answer that will both get him to shut up and placate him, Eridan stirs in your arms.  
His eyes flutter open, and his face contorts with a mixture of pain and confusion.  
He tries to speak.  
Quickly, you gather him up as you would a wriggler, supporting the back of his head in a palm and holding him to your shoulder, in case he’s going to spit blood or something.  
“You’re safe, Eridan.” you say as calmly as possible.  
“W-what the fuck?” he rasps “W-where am I? W-what’s all this pink stuff?”  
For some reason, you have to divert a surprising amount of energy to not cracking up. That royal accent gets you every time.  
“An anemone.” says Terezi.  
All at once, he peels himself from your grip and whirls around on Terezi, his eyes blazing.  
“W-what the fuck did you do that to me for?” he demands “W-what dumb fuckin’ logic made you think it w-was a great fuckin’ idea ta drag me the hell outta safety?!”  
“We need you down here!” she barks with a startling ferocity “You can’t just run off whenever you want to!”  
“My father put me up there!” he spits.  
Terezi’s blind eyes widen in shock “He what?”  
“Your Condesce put me up there to keep me safe!”  
“I didn’t know!” she retorts, letting go of Tavros’s hand and drawing herself up to her full height.  
On her back, the fins stiffen and ripple. She assumes the attack stance and Eridan, of course, does the same. The growls rising from their throats are almost enough to make you shiver- they’re so close to being adults, now, that their growls are actually threatening now.  
Before either one of them can deliver so much as a smack, Tavros is between them. He’s the biggest of the three children, and his growl is the most threatening so far. The other two back off immediately, to opposite ends of the anemone.  
Shooting you a fearful glance, Jake goes to Terezi and sticks himself in front of her, both to protect her and hold her back. You do the same to Eridan, who punches you angrily in the shoulder when he sees that you’re going to block him from the fight the way Tavros has.  
“You guys, this really isn’t the time to be kicking the shit out of each other. As far as we know, we’re the only ones alive.”  
It has always impressed you, the way Tavros’s hesitant, stuttering way of talking melts when he gets down to business.  
“W-what the hell does that mean?” demands Eridan “W-what about the camps? They’re around somew-where, right? People are hidin’.”  
“No, Eri, they’re not.” says Tavros sternly “There was only one camp. The Golems came and destroyed that one too, alright? The only reason I got out alive at all is because Dirk was right next to me when it happened and Jake was there too.”  
“No, no it’s not that bad,” counters Jake in an effort to reassure Eridan “Broderick Strider had just put the camp on lock-down, remember? He went off to go look for the Condesce, so we at least know that he’s alright, right? Or he has a better chance of being alright then all those people in the camp. And besides, John and Dave and Porrim left to do something at the city.”  
Eridan scoffs “Dav-ve and John? W-why the fuck did Porrim take them?!”  
“Because,” you say flatly “They’re little kids like you and they’re trained to listen to what they’re told to do.”  
“I don’t listen to w-what anyone tells me to do!”  
“Yeah, that’s ‘cos you’re a dick, Eridan, and a fucking prince!” snaps Terezi.  
“Hey, hey, hey!” shouts Tavros “Come on, this isn’t helping anything! We’ve gotta figure out what to do!”  
Eridan’s face is a snarl “W-we go back to dry land, that’s w-what w-we do! Feferi is up there!”  
A thick silence settles on the anemone, broken only by the sounds of the column of beasts overhead.  
“Say again?” you say.  
Eridan’s hands fall in limp fists on your back as he begins to cry “I don’t understand w-what happened.”  
“Feferi is where, Eridan?”  
“Cronus’s house.”  
Now, you know that Cronus isn’t dead. You helped him plan his final escape from the water, of course, so you know full well that he’s not dead.  
But it’s still a thrill of fear and happiness to hear that yes, someone else knows, someone else has seen him, and he’s not just a picture in your head, of the person that you wish desperately to hold again.  
“Cronus’s house.” you echo “W-where does Cronus liv-ve, Eridan?”  
“You remember that fishing boat that took Rufioh off?”  
Tavros swallows hard “Uh, yeah. Yeah I’m not gonna forget about that anytime soon.”  
“I think I w-was there. I…I don’t know-w.” suddenly, the tension is gone.  
Eridan sinks to the floor of the anemone, lying limp like a dead thing.  
“Eridan, it’s not safe.”  
“Nowhere is safe.” points out Jake “The best we can do for now is stay together.”  
Grateful for his change of heart, you flash him a quick smile “Yeah. Yeah that’s what we need to do.”  
“So for now your grand plan is to just sit here and what for help to arrive?” says Terezi “I’m all for finding Dave, don’t get me wrong, but that plan is the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard.”  
Jake pats her on the shoulder “You obviously haven’t heard about the time Dirk wanted to see the inside of a volcanic stack before it blew. You know, he was so sure it was extinct when he put his head inside, but then? Well, let’s just say if he were a cold-blood, his head would have exploded.”  
In spite of the situation, your cheeks flush with embarrassment “Don’t tell them that story.”  
Terezi flops on the floor, similarly drained of energy “Tell us that story. As long as we’re waiting.”   
Waiting for what, you wonder?  
For night? For when the stream of beasts finally ends? Or for when the Condesce comes and kills the last of you mers?  
You don’t know. You don’t care at this point.  
If this is what your world is; four unhappy people huddled in an anemone, hating each other and hating what fate has done to them, then that’s fine with you.


	35. Stranger: who are you? ==========>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter. Tired like you wouldn't believe, what with the Christmas season and all. Sorry, non-Christian and non-celebrating folks, but all this rabid consumerism has me bone tired.

Stranger: who are you? ==========>

Who are you?  
Who the gill-fucking hell are you?  
What kinda jumped up question is that to pose to a sister? Sweet Sea Jesus, where do these people get off? You’d think that the audience would know a tyrant when they sea one, in all her majestical wonder and whimsy.   
Don’t surprise you none. Humans ain’t nofin special. Wouldn’t know their dorsals from their dicks, if they had been smart about their evolution and never evolved outta dorsals.   
Humans are dumb, like you were saying, so you ain’t feeling too bad about the plans you been brewing and stewing up since that fucker with the purple fins and the good hair and his little shoal of friends jammed you up in here. In fact, there ain’t nofin that gives you more pleasure than to think about what the upper world’s gonna look like once you’re through with it.  
Your name has been fin-gotten, but fry around here call you the Sea Witch.  
And you’re ready to start getting serious about this whole destroying the world shit.


	36. The family secrets that drift to the surface

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a 6 week old kitten under my bed as I type this. New kitten. Cannot stop sniffing his fur. He smells like sugar and baby dreams.   
> His name was a subject of much debate. Seriously considered Karkat, Nepeta, Gamzee and Equius in case he was a STRONG kitty. Also thought about Hussie, but I decided on Santiago Nasar. Santi for short.  
> Readers of Gabriel Garcia Marquez will understand 
> 
> So! This chapter! The real reason why Lezlee moved his sons away!

Your name is Cronus Vantas, or, perhaps, Cronus Ampora now that you’re back in the water, and you are fighting for your life.  
Fighting for your life, yes, you haven’t done this in a long time. Walking the dog; when she’s really pulling on you, now that can feel like running for your life, the way it burns up your chest and your arm feels pulled from its socket when attached to her leash. Sometimes, when you’re watching a really good movie, it feels like you are fighting for your life alongside the character.  
But actual, physical fighting, with bare hands and teeth for your life and the life of your husband?  
No, you haven’t done this in a while.  
The octopus noticed you a little while ago. It broke away from its entourage of deep sea demons to follow you. At a distance, for some time, then it got gradually closer and closer until it was swimming in your group’s wake. Then, finally, it satisfied either its curiosity or bloodlust by grabbing Dave around the waist and attempting to eat him.  
You had no choice but to spring into action, which meant bellowing “DAVE GO FOR THE EYES!” and “KANKRI, STAY WITH PORRIM!”  
And then you remembered why it was that you left the ocean in the first place.  
Fighting is not something you really enjoy, so, yeah, you’re not having a good time, even though you’re doing perfectly fine.  
Dave’s still firmly in its grip. He is doing his damnedest to break away, and at this point John has also joined in. And gone slightly ballistic. As per your suggestion, John has gone straight for the beast’s eye and his now holding a sizeable chunk of it.  
Still, the beast is not deterred. It waves a thick tentacle at John, trying to swat him off the way you would swat off a mosquito. Meanwhile, Dave is getting slowly constricted over its fat, round head. His face is slowly turning an unpleasantly red colour that suggests his organs are about to be squeezed out of his mouth in the style of a tube of tooth-paste.  
Darting around several tentacles and whizzing past its beak, you reach Dave and try your luck at tugging at the tentacle wound around his waist. Dave is trying to tear the skin open in the way that a child would open a Christmas present, and it’s worked, but not very well.  
He hasn’t been able to make much progress towards getting it off.  
“Cro-” he gasps “It’s killing me.”  
“Yeah, baby boy, I noticed.”  
John lets out an inanimate shriek of rage and head butts the gouged section of the eye and with a flick of his tail, he disappears into the small crater he has made for himself.  
The beast reacts to this immediately. The first thing it does is grab you as well.  
So, for a moment, the world is a swirling vortex of water, the sound of your own pulse, and a single, clear thought: ‘I could have slept in this morning’.  
All of it, focused by the clamp of the pain of the tentacle about your waist. Dave’s right- it’s killing you.  
The beast thrashes fiercely. The only thing you can think to do is sink your hands into its rubbery flesh for a purchase, and hug the tentacle as tight as you can. If you went limp while it whipped you back and forth, your spine would snap.  
After what seems like centuries, the beast lets go of you. Well, not so much lets go, but its grip slackens enough for you to slither out, which you do immediately. As soon as you’re free, you grab Dave and tuck him under an arm and swim to as safe a distance as you can reach. Swimming through the blur of tentacles, your chest is aflame. It hasn’t broken anything, but it has bruised your organs. It will hurt like hell, even if you’re not going to die.  
“John,” wheezes Dave “We have to get John.”  
The beast has begun to spasm now. Emerging from the rolling sphere of the beast’s eye is just the slightest flicker of blue, which tells you that John’s still buried in the thing’s skull and wreaking all the havoc that he can with his bare hands. The beast convulses so hard it would be breaking its own bones if it had any to damage. It struggles and screams in the way that only another of its own kind could understand, if there are words mixed into that noise of agony.   
And then John pops out of the other eye and the beast begins to sink quickly. The water stirred from the depths of the ocean is so cold that the body sinks much faster than it ordinarily would have.  
John watches it go for a little ways. The tentacles drift and spasm in the water, as if it is waving goodbye. But John does not linger for long.  
He limps (do mers limp? What do your people even do when you’re injured? Swim funny?) over to the two of you, opening his arms for Dave, whom you pass over without question.  
Dave’s voice comes out in a wheeze “Nice job,” he clutches the small of John’s bruised back, trying to keep himself from crushing his friend or doubling over on him “That was brutal.”  
“My everything hurts.” says John, rather weakly for one who has just ripped a monster apart with literally his bare hands.   
You are overcome by a strangely maternal desire to gather them both up and give them kisses on the forehead. It’s all going to be alright, you want to say.  
“We know.” John is muffled in your collarbone.  
“Gedoff me.” mutters Dave “Don’t kiss me on the forehead, you freak.”  
They seem to have forgotten the initial awe that accompanies meeting a long-lost old friend, who happens to be a prince as well, but that suits you just fine. Like you wanted them to kow-tow and drool in shock and wonder.  
After the three of you have swum-limped back to the relative safety of the shelf where Kankri and Porrim are waiting, you make a decision.  
“We need to get somewhere safe,” you announce “Preferably somewhere the monsters can’t get to us, so Porrim and Kanny can discuss their issues and the boys can relax.”  
“The boys are fine.” says John.  
“I am not aware of ever having had an issue with Porrim, prior to this day and this revelation that I apparently am a long lost sibling.” says Kankri.  
“An anemone.” says Dave “Shit can’t touch us in there. Let’s find one and, like, hide in it like fucking cowards or something.”  
“There’s a difference between cowardice and a reasonable retreat.” says Porrim snippily.  
“Yeah. The way you describe it.”  
“Oh for crap’s sake, you people,” you shake your head in disgust and thrown an arm around Kankri’s shoulder, as if to guard him from their stupidity “You people are ridiculous. Dave, where’s the nearest anemone?”  
He shrugs “I don’t even know where the fuck we are.”  
“In the ocean somewhere.”   
He shoots John a withering look before continuing “But I know that we’re close to somewhere that I know where the fuck that is.”  
“That doesn’t make sense.”  
“John, why are you up my hole today?”  
“I’m covered in tentacle-beast blood. If I want to pester you, then I’m gonna pester you. I saved your life, which means you kinda belong to me now.”  
You clear your throat before Porrim gets too frustrated and starts knocking some heads together, shutting them up.  
“Dave, lead the way.”  
He does. He’s exhausted- you can tell by the way he swims. More of a trudge through the water, as if each stroke of the tail takes more and more out of him. Despite John’s general prickliness today (he must be deep in mourning, and in your experience, those who don’t know how to do grief just do frustration), he swims right beside Dave and puts an arm around him a few times, which is not an easy thing to do when in motion.  
While the two of them conduct their awkward, unwitting little romance up ahead and Porrim trails behind sullenly, you take the opportunity to check up on your husband.  
It takes a good deal of effort not to just dissolve into a weeping fit on his shoulder, but you manage it. You’re a warrior for fuck’s sake. You can handle this kind of shit.  
“Did she hurt you?”  
Kankri shrugs “I don’t even know what happened to me.”  
“It happened to you just before the rain started falling.”  
“The rain?” he says quizzically.  
So you tell him.  
You have never seen his skin so pale- he almost looks like his brother, as if he was never meant to hold an ounce of melanin in his skin. For a long time, he says nothing. Neither do you, figuring that he will need some time to quietly digest the story.  
But he does not need as long as you think. Sometimes you forget it, but you have a bad habit of under-estimating your husband.  
“So our sewers are full of our neighbours?”  
You nod silently.  
“Jesus. Well. That can’t have been pleasant to witness.”  
“Honestly, the worst thing was not knowing where you were.”  
He cocks an eyebrow “Is it any better now, that you’ve got me tucked safely under an arm?”  
You shrug “I don’t know. At least I don’t have to worry about you being tortured, because I know where you are now.”  
Glancing around, Kankri’s expression becomes grim “Swimming along the edge of a chasm of doom?”  
“With me. You’re safe with me.”  
“What would you have done if John hadn’t killed that…that giant squid, thing?”  
He looks over his shoulder, at the place where the corpse had sunk. You wonder how good his eyes are in this salt and this lighting. They must be excellent; if he’s got the tail and the gills, then it’s likely that he’s got the rest of the package too. One of your species at last, and you’re not sure how you feel about that.  
According to Porrim, he’s been a half-mer along. The son of the people’s greatest hero, no less. You kinda gotta wonder how you missed that.  
“I would have made sure that you got away.”  
He smiles, and you are reminded of the first time you realised you knew you were in love with him. you’re not sure why. That moment by the canal just tends to come back to you whenever he smiles.  
The smell of the filthy water, and his hair. The sound of the sludge inching past in its cement vein, and the sound of his nervous heart-beat. The splash of Eridan’s knife hitting the water, and the little, hitched gasp that he made in his throat when your lips touched his.  
Man, he was a terrible kisser on that first kiss.  
You feel sorry for whoever the fuck it was that he was dating before he met you in college. Brian Kramer. You tracked down the dude a few years ago on Facebook to find out what your husband’s first lay and possibly first love looked like, and was surprised to find that he was white as a lily. For some reason, you thought the guy would be Asian, like, Thai, or Indian. To this day you cannot explain why.   
“I’m so sorry, Cronus.”  
“Yeah, just don’t get kidnapped anymore.”  
He frowns and shakes his head. You love the slow, dancing way his hair moves underwater “Not about that. I’m sorry that you lost your home.”  
“You know what’s weird?”  
“Hm?”  
“I don’t believe that it’s gone. I mean, I know it is. I’ve seen the evidence. You smell that acid taste in the water?”  
Kankri squints, as if trying to pick out the sour particles which must be clogging up even his new, amateur sense of smell “Yeah.”  
“That’s my home making that smell, and I still don’t believe it’s happened. I still don’t believe my father left us all in our time of need.”  
“I’m sure he didn’t. Your father is not like mine, although I have to wonder if he left this town for different reasons than I originally was told.”  
“You never told me.”  
Kankri does not look like he wants to tell you now “Didn’t I?”  
In the post-coital afterglow, he gets quite chatty. He’ll talk about anything and everything that occurs to him. It recalls his college days, except with the filter removed, as well as the anxiety to be heard and recognised and obeyed, or at least acknowledged in some significant way, which coloured every word that left his mouth. You hadn’t realised how much you missed the way his jaw unhinges, and all his thoughts on the world and the state of things spilt first- assuming you survive with the necessary pieces intact, the first thing you’ll do when the world is saved is bang him and listen to your pusher’s content.  
What was the point you were making?  
Oh yeah. Family history.  
Yeah, no. He never really talks about his family unless it is to praise Karkat. His father was not a fan of his ‘choice’ to love his own gender, but now that you think about it, considering who you are in relation to who Kankri apparently is, that might have been more due to the fact that he was dating someone from the world which his father had barely escaped from alive.  
After all, who is Lezlee Vantas to talk? He boned your father.  
He boned Cary Ampora. Maybe only once, but Jegus, Jesus, and all those other saviour people, it takes a powerful kind of person to get your father between the sheets. You’ve been around for a fair few years and he has never taken a lover in that time. When Bro was feeling nostalgic for their younger, wilder days, he’d tell you stories of the pushers that Cary had inspired and broken, before he got serious and had you. You’re not sure where you came from, and you don’t think it matters.  
Whoever your other parent is, they were probably no one important.  
Same goes for Eridan. He’s not really your brother. Or even your cousin, since your father doesn’t have any siblings. He just came from somewhere, the same way you randomly appeared. Probably popped out of a giant clam shell when your father was hunting for pearls.  
And now Kankri is talking and you will do well to listen.  
“He told me that the church he belonged to was into drugs and that he had to get away from them. Now that I think about it, it is more likely that he just wanted to get away from the coast so that your father could not reach him again.”  
You shiver at the thought of how much different your lives could have been, had Kankri’s family stayed on the coast “Why do you think he waited so long to move? You were Karkat’s age when he went, almost.”  
“I don’t understand a thing that man does, even now that I know what I know.”  
With nothing better to say or do to comfort him, you kiss your husband.  
Dave spoils the moment as he calls up ahead: “There’s the anemone!”  
John perfects the moment when he adds: “Oh my Gog! Dave, look! It’s your brother!”

Cronus Ampora: be your father-in-law ==========>  
Lezlee Vantas: say goodbye ==========>

Your name is Lezlee Vantas, and you never have to wait very long for Cary, once you reach the shore.  
He understands that your time is precious (though his royal attitude suggests that such a valuable commodity would be well spent on him), especially when it’s what little leisure time that a single father to two sons, and the preacher to a whole congregation has managed to carve out.  
When not on the pulpit or leaning over the stove, with your boys howling at each other in Farsi in the next room, you can be found in one of two places.  
The first is Graa’ant Makara’s house, where you like to bitch about how your sons don’t seem to know how to shut up and like to listen to Graa’ant worry about what his sons will think when they discover they are in fact his uncles. The second is the beach, where you have grown grudgingly fond of these short, clipped and slightly awkward talks with Cary.  
Now, while it is true that you are both grown-ass men and should be able to surmount the fact that you once boinked as teenagers, it also true that you are both too proud to admit that you would probably do it again. Were it not for that pesky sensibility and good judgement standing in your way, you’d’ve gladly sucked whatever the hell it is that serves as a mer’s cock a long time ago, for Cary.  
But, nope.  
You’ve got sons and a life that happens off this beach. There is no way to have a no-strings attached relationship with you, as your first girlfriend-cum-mother-to-your-children discovered, so it would not do to try to…to do Cary.  
What were you saying?  
Oh, right.  
Cary’s punctual.  
He is basically a king, so of course he is punctual.  
“Lezlee.”  
Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.  
Looking to your left, you see him. He has found himself a rock to pose majestically on top of, kind of like the Little Mermaid, if she were a warrior king.  
You nod to him “Good evening.”  
“How-w are the boys?”  
“Sleeping, thank God.”  
“Did you drug them?”  
“I’m a preacher, Cary. My morals are obviously not the kind that allow me to drug my only children,” your mouth twitches in a smile “No matter how badly I want to. They just tired themselves out early. Karkat and Gamzee were playing all day. Did you see them?”  
Cary shakes his head “You think I’v-ve go the time to languish around, lookin’ pretty all day on this beach? No, no, I just got here. But I did see the sand-castle they made. It ain’t even a sand-castle. More like a feat of architecture. You gotta get your baby boy into architecture, Lez, I swear to Gog that thing is about fifteen feet high.”  
Karkat and Gamzee like to do that. Build giant towers of sand, which you and Graa’ant always giggle about being phallic, because you’re still absolute children around each other even this close to your late forties.  
You’re glad that Karkat has found himself a friend like Gamzee. The fact that it’s Graa’ant’s own ‘son’ just makes things better- and Kankri seems to be getting along fine with the other kids as well. He and Lee’s older son, Horus, seem to be talking about going to the same university in a few years. Not to follow each other or anything. It’s a coincidence, a happy coincidence.  
“How are Cronus and Eridan?”  
Cary makes this strange facial gesture that is a beaming, proud grin and a grimace at the same time. He loves his sons as much as you love your own, of course, and they seem to drive him insane the same way yours do.   
“Fuckin’ nuts, as usual. Cronus just fell in lov-ve, actually. W-well, he just let me know-w about it. W-we got this thing called moiraillegance w-where I’m from-”  
“I know about that. Back when we were in our saving the world days, you liked to tell me that me and Graa’ant were the cutest pair of moirails you ever saw.”  
“Yeah, yeah, shut up, I’m talkin’.” he grins, obviously over-joyed that his son has obtained whatever the hell it is that a moirail actually is “He’s finally got a moirail. Thank Gog- I thought he was broken, or something! And I think Eridan’s gonna have a pale hook-up with the mer he’s supposed to marry, which kinda throws a w-wrench in my plans, I guess, but I’ll find some way to work around it so they don’t hav-ve to throw-w away their little pale-mance.”  
You nod, pretending you understood half of what he has said “Sounds good.”  
“Yeah,” he smile fades very suddenly “And while we’re talking about plans for the future, I’ve gotta tell you something.”  
Without knowing why, you feel your heart sink to the pit of your stomach. Whatever is coming, it is not good news “Uh…ok.”  
“You need to leave this town. She’s gonna escape.”  
There is only the sound of waves and wind. In the distance, the soft rumble of traffic. And overhead, the scream of a small flock of gulls.  
You swallow hard “How soon?”  
“I don’t know-w. I just know-w that it’s comin’.”  
“Then I guess Mom better get her ass out of that cave.”  
“She isn’t coming out. I’ve already tried. I’ll try to get her to come out again, but there’s only so many times I can make that trip. It takes a day either way, and I usually spend a day tryin’ ta get her tail outta there. I can’t take three days aw-way from the kingdom as often as I need ta.”  
“So…so you still won’t tell Broderick?”  
“If I tell Bro, you know-w that fool’s gonna die tryin’ ta get her outta there. He idolises that old salt. Sorry, Lez. I don’t mean ta talk bad ‘a your mother.”  
“Well why the fuck not?” you shrug, your heart heavy “She is clearly at the end of her life and her rope. She’s given up on the family. All I get from her are letters, addressed like she’s still in the country. She uses her magic to call the boys on their birthdays and around Eid and Ramadan, but that’s about it. You still say you won’t let me go underwater and try to get her out myself?”  
Cary’s expression is thunderous “You know-w what would happen if you went back in the water.”  
“I’d never be able to come back out again.” you say, practiced and grim.  
The human body can only change between the mer and human form once, and then the next time the mer form is taken, you would be stuck. If you went back into the water to wrench your mother from her cave, you would never be able to take on your human form again.  
Your boys would be as good as orphaned. Seeing what you have seen under the water, and with that old tyrant imprisoned in the middle of the city, you cannot in good conscious try moving your family under the water. You are only a half-mer. They are only quarter-mers, which is still more than enough to have them adapt to the water and life underwater.  
But what then? Give up your life up here? Force them from their home and their friends?  
The quarter mer in Karkat is so strong, you cannot believe it sometimes. He and Gamzee- their friendship is a ‘pale’ one, you think. What Karkat feels for Gamzee must be what Cary identifies as pale relationship. Taking Karkat away from Gamzee and the rest of his wonderful, weird friends would destroy him. You would miss your friends too.  
That mer half in you loves Graa’ant like a pale-mate, as Cary has told you. The rest of your friends, too, are irreplaceable to you. After what you went through with them? It might kill you to separate from them.  
But it seems that, no matter which choice you make, you’re going to have to move away from them.   
You can either accept your mer blood and go into the water, to live right on top of the tyrant that nearly killed you and the rest of the world. Or you can move away from the coast, and hope Cary knows what he is doing, well enough to keep control of the situation.  
“We’ll move away. Porrim’s city. We’ll move to Porrim’s city.”  
Cary folds his arms, and lays back on the rock, his head heavy in your lap. His horns dig into your stomach a little bit, but you feel no urge to move him. He hasn’t touched you in two years, actually, so this is kind of nice.  
“You and Porrim hate each other.”  
You shrug “I don’t plan to tell her we’re moving. As far as I’m concerned, Porrim is a stranger to me and the boys. But if the world is going to end soon, then I might as well have the whole family in one city. Estranged family included.”  
“Interesting.”  
“Not very.”  
“You’re such a weird person, ya know that?”  
“You made me like this.”  
Cary sighs through his nose “You know-w, I bet if you came to the city, Cronus and Kankri would be matesprits.  
“You think so?”  
“Sure. My boy needs someone sensible.”  
“And mine needs someone to teach him when to shut his mouth. You think they’d be good for each other?”  
“Better than w-we ev-ver were.”  
“So is this the last time I’ll ever see you?”  
“I hope so.”  
“In that case, can I ask you something?”  
“I’m not in lov-ve with you. Nev-ver was.”  
“I wasn’t going to ask that.” you figured that out ages ago “I was going to ask if you mind if I kiss you.”  
He looks up at you.  
As mers age, the colours of their eyes get more intense. You doubt that the purple his eyes have grown to be exists anywhere else in the world. Not even in the eyes of his sons.  
“Fine. G’head. No tongue.”  
Two weeks later, you finish the arrangements to get your family the hell out of Dodge.

Lezlee Vantas: be Dirk Strider ==========>  
Dirk Strider: holy shit it’s totally your moirail =========>

Your name is Dirk Strider.  
Holy shit.  
This is awesome.  
This is the darkest hour of the history of your people, but this is awesome.  
This is so awesome.  
It’s your moirail. It’s your fucking moirail.  
You haven’t seen this charming bastard in years.  
Holy shit. You totally love this guy.  
You can’t think. Your think-sponge cannot process thought. Coherent thought is beyond you, like, leagues beyond you.  
Literally the only thought your head can hold at the moment is the thought that Cronus isn’t the only person hugging you.  
Is that Dave?  
Ok, this is even better than awesome.  
Is there a superlative to describe better than awesome?  
You need a second.

You have had a second. Now you can think.  
“Jesus Christ,” says Cronus, calling upon some human saviour “You’re aliv-ve.”  
Without speaking, you first kiss him on the mouth, in the light, passionless way that moirails do, then you kiss your brother on the bridge of his freckled nose.   
Dave cries without shame. He wraps his arms around your neck. You let go of Cronus to hug him so hard you’re slightly afraid his organs might squirt out of his mouth.  
“Thank you, Gog” you whisper “Thank you for saving him.”  
“Gog didn’t do shit,” he rasps close to your ear “It was all John and Porrim. Where’s Dad?”  
“I don’t know, kiddo.”  
Distantly, you hear Jake scream: “John!”  
The wake of his dash to John buffets you, and a second later there is the sound of their thick skulls knocking together. Out of the corner of your eye, you see him swinging John around and laughing in shock and delight.  
“Terezi!” suddenly, it occurs to you that she needs to be here “Terezi, come here!”  
But she has already heard his voice. Dave is reluctant to peel away from you, until he sees her. He parts from you without a word. They collide in mid-sprint and knock the wind out of each other, grasping onto each other desperately.  
“Where the fuck did you go.” he growls “Where the fuck did you go.”  
“I’m so sorry,” she says “Kinda, kinda sorry and kinda not. I had to get Eridan.”  
Eridan?  
Oh that’s right.  
As if on cue, Eridan materialises at your side. Cronus gathers his cousin up in your arms. Their reunion is not so frantic, though, and you guess it is because Cronus had his cousin in his house for a little while.   
Still, Cronus is surprised to see him “How the hell did you get down here?”  
“Psiimon Captor had Terezi kidnap me.”   
“Oh. Uh. I love you, I guess.”  
“W-what does that ev-ven mean right now-w?”  
Cronus kisses him on the forehead, and nuzzles the top of his head. Because brothers, you guess.  
At last, you notice that Cronus has a red shadow. Hanging back a respectful distance, sure, but obviously desperate to be back under his arm.  
“You must be Kankri.”  
Recognising the invitation to join you, Kankri swims over. His colour is a bright red, not unlike your own.   
How the hell do humans greet each other again-oh, he’s reaching for your hand. Shake hands, that’s right.  
You shake his hand, careful to copy his gesture exactly so you don’t end up bopping him in the face on accident “I’m Cronus’s…” you trail off lamely.  
He hasn’t contacted you since dying- faking death, anyway. You definitely still love him.  
“Moirail.” finishes Cronus with an unguarded smile “Dirk is basically my platonic husband.”  
Kankri nods “And I suppose you know that I’m his…his romantic husband. What’s the word?”  
“Matespriteship.” says Eridan.  
Kankri nods, clearly not understanding the term he uses “I’m his matesprit.”  
In a few moments, you are all gathered in the anemone. The space was never in excess to begin with, and now it’s just plain cramped. Everyone is crushed up together, shoulder-to-shoulder, but you don’t mind. Jake is practically in your lap, like Cronus on your other side, and Dave really has crawled into your lap, which he hasn’t done since he was too young to swim straight.  
“Ok,” says Porrim, her words muffled in Kankri’s shoulder “We need to figure out how to wrap this shit up already.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update: Santi is flipping his shit. Has just discovered he owns a tail and it must be punished for its existence. Over the course of editing this chapter, he sneezed 18 times and attacked my headphones twice  
> Also, Psiimon Captor is a dick


	37. Sollux grows a tail and loses his shirt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gore warning for this chapter. There's a lot of it.

Your name is Cary Ampora, and he was waiting for you, like you knew he would be.  
You want to be mad at him, but you cannot summon the strength or the cruelty to hate the man. Gog only knows what he must have suffered through to wait here.  
“Hey.” says Bro Strider.  
He is waiting at a place not that far from the city. A little cone of rock where the two of you used to meet up, way back before you even knew who Lezlee Vantas was. In the early years, your pale-mance had to stay a secret. Your mother, Eridan Senior, did not want her son consorting with anyone but the best. She told you that you needed to wait to choose a moirail, and when you did, they had to come from the court so you would not be tainted by the habits and mannerisms of one of a class beneath you.  
Of course, she failed to see that assigning someone as interesting and charismatic to protect you as Bro Strider was an instant recipe for falling in pale love. She failed to see this right up until you had finished saving the world- she didn’t even know about it until she was on her death bed. You kind of just told her as she lay dying, in the bloody aftermath of the battle that sealed the Sea Witch away. She used her last breath to give Bro her blessing, and then died.  
So, yeah, no, this guy knows you well. He knows that you were going to check for him where the two of you used to go to have secret jam sessions.  
Limping over to him, you think about how good a jam session would feel right now. Gog, you would give anything to just pile the fuck out of your pale-babe right now, but that is going to have to wait.  
“Hey.”  
“She’s not comin’ out then?”  
“It was a waste of time to ev-ven try.”  
You collapse into his arms. Bro sinks to the bottom of the cove and gathers you up, so that your head rests on a shoulder and you are settled in his lap. For a long time, all you can hear is the steady beat of his pusher. The lullaby of your teenaged years. The rhythm that lulled you into sleep on those dark, dark days and nights during the battle for the fate of the world. Most recently, a pleasant addition to the soundtrack of your dreams.  
Sometimes, he slips into your quarters and gets into the ‘coon with you, so you share your dreams and each other’s chill and warmth. It is unlikely that you will ever have a sleep such as that again.  
Half by accident and half by design, you end up falling asleep in his arms. You sleep for no more than fifteen human minutes, but the effect is undeniably rejuvenating.  
“Oh Gog, was I asleep?” you slur “How long did I sleep?’  
“Like, fifteen human minutes.” he places a hand on your forehead and pushes you back down before you can spring to your feet, and swim about in a panic “It’s alright. You’ve been swimming for three days.”  
“Gog. Gog almighty. Is the city really dead?”  
“Yes.”  
“Jegus Grist. I…I didn’t even believe it when it was happenin’. I didn’t act as a Condesce, you know, or ev-ven a moirail. All I was when I knew-w she had broken loose…I was just a parent. I’m so sorry.”  
He shakes his head, combing his fingers gently through your wild hair “I know. I’m a father first, too. The only reason I’m here is because I know my boys are safe. One of them is with Porrim-”  
“And the other one is Dirk,” you finish with a grin.  
An old joke. The joke isn’t really a joke. More of an acknowledgement that Broderick’s older son could probably rule the entirety of the seas single-handedly if he wanted. He can do almost anything, but as with most young adults, the trouble is getting him motivated to get up off his tail and prove it to himself and his audience.  
“Your boys safe, and mine are on land. I wish I had thought to put them on the land with mine before I tore out of there.”  
Bro shakes his head “You did what you could. You acted admirably, believe me.”  
You let out a hollow and bitter laugh “I don’t know-w if I did. I already know that you did. You lead them all to safety, right?”  
After a pause where his sense of modesty and honesty do battle, he nods “I kind of did. I didn’t know how long you were gonna take, but I knew what you would have done. Mostly they just went there on their own. All of them are dead now.”  
“I know-w. I can smell it.”  
For a while, the two of you sit in silence.  
A silence that is profound without the rumble of the city in the distance.  
Bro’s pusher keeps on beating underneath your collar bone. You kind of want to get up- it’s one of those really annoying, incessant urges like when you have to pee, even though you’re so comfortable that you don’t want to move. You know you’re going to have to get up to go save the world at some point, but it seems some bothersome from here.  
From this sheltered cove, where so many feelings jams were held that you can almost hear their echoes each time someone’s scales rasp on the rocks. The seaweed, caught in the breeze, forms green curtains which make the light filter through as a dark green. One of your palest moments ever in this place was looking at Bro underneath all that green light and realising that you never wanted to pile anybody else, ever.  
You never have.  
You’ve never been afraid that you might stray from his side either.  
Some part of you understands that this is the last moment of peace you will have with Bro. For the remainder of your life, which you sense will not be much longer.  
With your kingdom gone, there is little left to do but destroy the Sea Witch before she destroys the world at large. Then, to find the boy somewhere safe to be. Bro’s boys, and whoever else might have clung onto life alongside them.  
There are a few pockets of fertility and safety, here and there.  
Then you suppose you might die. It has not been a long life by any means. Especially not for one of your species, or the particular colour of your species. Easily, you could live for a few millennia, if you wanted to.  
However, you do not feel it is an option anymore. It’s just not something you want to do, to live years and years with the knowledge of what you and your people have lost.  
You figure that if the old Condesce doesn’t kill you in the process of killing her, then you’ll do it yourself, by wandering off into the darkness at the bottom of the sea.   
The idea that your life will be over soon is relieving, somehow. Just, very, very comforting.  
At length, he asks “Are you ready?”  
“Yeah.”  
“To the city?”  
“To the city.”  
“What are you going to do without your weapon?”  
“Fight her with my bare hands.”  
“What about Meenah?”  
“…I guess I’ll kill her too.”  
“Hm. She earned it, if you do kill her. You gave her a chance to prove herself and she destroyed us all with it.”  
“Yeah. A bitch, just like her mother. Not Feferi, though. Gog, I hope she’s safe.”  
“Maybe she’s with Eridan?”  
“How would that work?”  
“I don’t know-w. Wishful thinking, alright? Now-w shut up and sav-ve the world with me.”

Cary Ampora: be Feferi Peixies ===========>  
Feferi Peixies: go back to the water =======>

Your name is Feferi Peixies, and the quarter-mer nearly makes your pusher stop when he busts into the salt-water room and asks, in his very, very, needlessly loud voice “Have you seen my bastard father anywhere?”  
Both you, and the small, scrawny human you have befriended, say “No!”  
Too loud, you know. If the quarter-mer Karkat weren’t distracted by his own problems, then he would notice and he would ask what you were hiding.   
“Well if he comes down here will you tell him I need to see his ass? Yes? Good? Good!”  
With that, he shoots back up the stairs, slamming the heavy door behind him. He reminds you of a very nervous member of the species Sol, the scrawny human, tells you are called ‘dolphins’. The colouring is almost right.  
Once you are sure he is gone, you turn back to Sol “So, it’s decided?”  
He nods “I don’t know how I’m gonna get you out, though. I can’t really ask someone to carry you out.”  
You blink “Well, why not? Why wouldn’t they want to help me?”  
“Because you’re still really hurt. Also, they’d want to walk back here with me. I don’t think they’d let me go down there with you.”  
He glances over his shoulder, nervous that someone might be eavesdropping. Drumming your fingers on the rim of the salt-water pond, you chew your bottom lip. It seems so clear to you.  
The humans helped you before, so why would they shirk from helping you again? And if they are afraid to let their friend accompany you into the underwater world, why not accompany him?  
You suppose human children must be taught to be more fearful creatures than you and your age contemporaries.   
Sol hasn’t even killed anything yet. When you asked him what his first hunt was, which is a normal enough question where you come from, he gave you this frightened look and said: “You’re a hunter? What do you even hunt?”  
You did not know his words for the animals. Cronus used to tell you this and that about in the human world, in his summers back home, but you have since forgotten most of it, without the chance to practice your human terms on people who understand them already.  
So you described the creatures by appendage. Giant things with tentacles, you told him, and monsters with so many teeth it makes you hurt just to look at them all.  
“The only thing I’ve ever killed are spiders.” he admitted, abashed.  
Your new friend’s tongue does something strange to his words. He sounds like a hissing slither-beast, which Eridan probably thinks is very cute. Eridan loves other mers’ imperfections. It makes him feel both superior and uninteresting for having no serious or notable physical problems.  
“If they are worried for you, then they don’t need to be. I can protect you.”  
He frowns “Yeah. I guess so.”  
Why should he guess?  
You’re being very serious. You even stopped with the fish puns, just to show him how truly, seriously serious you are being. But you guess he doesn’t know you well enough to know just what dropping fish-puns signifies.  
“Let me see the bottle.”  
For the fifth time in as many minutes, he produces the bottle from his pocket and hands it over. You turn the bottle over in your hands and try to imagine what it must feel like to have a form changed.  
“You’re sure no one saw you take this from Cronus’s dream bubble?”  
He nods solemnly.  
You’re about to make another attempt at persuading him to ask for help when the door swings open. You freeze, instinctively knowing you have been caught.  
The strongest human is there. The human whose fake-skin (shirt, is the word, you think) stopped you from bleeding out.  
The look on his face is grim.  
“Equius!” sputters Sol, his strange tongue problem absolutely butchering the syllables “Uh, we weren’t- we weren’t gonna…it’s not what…”  
“It’s not what it sounds like?” guesses his friend gently, then, to you, he says “Most of the adults have gone back to the town to help with the repairs. They left us here…Sol, your father called mine from the town just a moment ago. I believe I might be able to sneak you both from the house, if that’s what you want.”  
Without hesitation, you nod “That’s what we want. I need to go back to the water.”  
The Equius human’s eyes fall on the phial in your hand “And that will allow Sollux to follow you?”  
“Yes.”  
Sol’s face turns the colour of sea foam “Uh- no, no that’s not what I was going to do! I mean, it is! I mean-”  
“You need to follow Eridan.”  
“I need to follow Eridan.” he repeats softly “I…I can’t let him be down there and not know what’s going on. I don’t really care if I’m in trouble.”  
“Sollux, I’m going to ask you something…rather uncomfortable.”  
The Equius human rubs his arm in a way that you suppose is nervous. Seems to be a human gesture; rubbing one’s arms when nervous. You don’t get it, but you wonder if they do either.  
“Are you in love?”  
Sollux’s mouth is drawn into a tight line. He glances between you and Equius, and then up at the false sky. You look up as well, wondering if it is a human custom to write the answers to difficult questions on the lids of their dwellings.   
“Yes.” he says it like a sigh “Yes.”  
“I figured you were in love with someone.” the other boy’s shoulders slump with the release of the tension from the room “I…I thought it might be Karkat, which would have made things rather awkward for all of us.”  
Sol wrinkles his nose in disgust “Ew, no! Who could fall in love with him?”  
“I think it is a deliberate strategy on his part, to make himself so undesirable.”  
You have grown excited “So, so you’ll take us! You’ll help us?”  
Equius nods “Although I do not offer my help lightly. I offer this with the understanding that you’re going to keep him safe and bring him back home, to us.”  
Sol scoffs “Like Dad would notice if I died.”  
Equius’s blue eyes seem to freeze “He might not, but I assure you, we would. We would miss you terribly if you decided to take leave of us without warning. I…that is why I’m afraid to do this, but I can see that you’re going whether or not you have my help.” He nods to the phial in your hand “That is going to change you?”  
Sol nods guiltily “I dug it out of this thing Cronus has in his room. I was just looking for somewhere quiet to cry off the whole….Eridan thing, and then I found it.”  
A few hours ago, Eridan was dragged into the sea by a mer that sounds to you like Terezi. Sol isn’t sure about the name he heard called anymore, or if it was a name at all, rather than some order in your language. You’re pretty sure it was Terezi. She’s never been very fearful about coming up to the shore, even after she got caught in that net the one time and almost died painfully.   
Terezi would totally kidnap Eridan and drag him back to the kingdom. She would call it his princely duty, to pull his weight when his people are suffering.  
No one was sure what to do when the news was delivered. Except for you.   
You knew right away that if Eridan was in the water again, you needed to be beside him. Just has to be that way.  
This is the death of your people that you are facing. Not the threat of extinction, but the process of it. No matter what happens to the camp; whether people there flourish or perish, the numbers are nowhere near enough to replenish and rebuild the city.  
Soon, your people will scatter. Perhaps band together, to be once again a tribe of nomads, searching for another place to make another city. Maybe they will melt into some of the other cities in the other six seas, if those cities will have anything to do with outsiders.  
All you know for sure is that when the time comes to leave, to stay, or to die, you want to make that decision with Eridan.   
Eridan is your pale-mate. Moirails stick together, no matter what. It’s kind of the whole point of the quadrant.  
You clear your throat.  
The humans both look at you.  
“I promise I’ll keep him safe. He won’t leave my side the whole time we’re down there, not until we get to Eridan. In fact…you know what? Knowing Eridan, I think I won’t leave him alone even then. Do we have a deal?”  
If there is something that you remember Cronus telling you from the human world, it’s about shaking hands.  
They do it to say hello to each other for the first time, or sealing a deal.  
You stick your hand out solemnly and wait for the human to reciprocate. When he does, you are struck by how calloused and rough his hands are. Maybe these human children aren’t as coddled as you think?  
“Thank you.” he says, with the gravity of an adult’s voice, but just a hint of amusement that suggests he’s embarrassed by how grown-up he’s having to act “Sol, behave yourself.”  
“What the fuck are you supposed to be, my keeper?”  
“That is Ida’s job. I’m just substituting, because she would probably chew off your legs if you attempted to go to the sea in front of her.”  
Sol laughs without humor.  
The process of getting you out of the water is nowhere near as easy as you hoped it would be. Which is to say, it hurts like crazy. Equius handles you like you’re a soap bubble he’s doing his best not to pop. Instead of putting you on his back, where you will be jostled and poked easier, he carries you in the front, with an arm around your shoulders and the other underneath the joint in the middle of your tail. To make his burden easier, you wrap your arms around his neck.  
He seems surprised by the cords of muscle in your arms. And, for some reason, embarrassed by your bare chest. Once you notice that something about your breasts seems to bother him, you surreptitiously arrange your hair to cover as much of your flat chest as you can. The chest isn’t much to look at. Despite the auspiciousness of your blood colour, your chest is pretty spongey and soft, and just generally terrible at taking punches. With a pang, you are reminded of all the times you attempted to make viable armour of your breasts, as tough as Meenah’s, by having Eridan slug you in the chest until his knuckles were sore and he stopped for fear that he’d end up bruising your breathing sacs.  
You miss him so much.  
First thing you’re gonna do when you see him is make him punch you right in the chest. Hard.   
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m getting you all wet.”  
You notice that you’ve dripped about a gallon of water onto the floor. Not to mention just a hint of your fuchsia blood. Gog, you wish you could stop bleeding.   
“It’s alright.” says Equius “No need to worry.”  
The path he takes out of the house is what you think might be the back-way. The door you come out of opens directly onto the beach, and not the front, where the strange metal-smelling boxes crouch the concrete strip. On the way out, the animal they call a dog jumps up and trots from another room.  
“Hey, Girl!” calls a female voice from the room “Come back here!”  
Equius responds quickly and smoothly “It’s alright, Nepeta. I have her. I’m going to give her a quick run on the beach.”  
“Ok. Be careful, man, and watch out for mers and sharks.”  
Sol makes sure to creep in Equius’s shadow, so his own and his footsteps cannot be seen or heard.  
Personally, you think he’s being about as sneaky as a giant tooth-beast sticking its head in a coral tube, but you don’t tell him this. Human senses are duller. They don’t hear and see as much noise or…or stuff, as you can.  
They’re basically deaf, blind and crippled, the poor dears.  
Being back on the beach should feel good.  
But before you can enjoy the feeling of the sea breeze on your air-conditioning chapped skin, you smell what the breeze carries.  
Blood. Lots of blood.  
“Allahu Ahkbar.” mutters Equius.  
“Great almighty Jegus and the little gods.” you echo.  
“Holy fucking shit.” is what Sol comes out with.  
“Are…are those bodies?” ventures Equius, pausing on the back porch.  
The dog’s shoulder-fur stands up straight, and she growls.  
Sol nudges her back inside the house with a pat on the head, and some hollow, muttered comfort that they’re going to be alright. Thankfully, she does not bark to rouse the other girls and the smaller, angry human, who you can still hear calling for his father in the house.  
“Yeah.” You say “Makes sense. The sea-breeze is blowing this way. The current, I mean, the current would have brought them this way.”  
“Are they the people she killed?” asks Sol hoarsely “God. There’s a lot.”  
“Yeah. Most of us are dead now.”  
You expect Equius to turn around and lock you in the salt-water room. Instead, he steps off the porch and begins to walk towards the blood-stained sand. The sand has been made into a rainbow of vivid washes of even more vivid blood colours.  
It’s disgusting to look at, but you make yourself look at anyway. In a moment, you will be swimming in that slurry of blood. Every now and then, in the choppy waves of the surf, the death-pale limbs of a corpse pokes out in flank of the wave. A few are tumbling, scraped and shredded, in the shallows.  
And yet, Equius still goes to the edge of the water.  
He has to walk for a little while, to reach a spot where there are not bodies tumbling in the water or gigantic slicks of blood on top of the water. He knows he has to get in the water and, taking a deep, deep breath, steps into the water, dodges a severed limb that washes into your path, and lowers you into the water.  
The feeling of the water on your skin is both bliss and horror at the same time.  
Horror, because you’re touching water that has been mixed and boiled and thoroughly churned up among blood and other fluids, all belonging to your people.  
Bliss, because you were made for the water and you belong to it.  
“Are you going to be alright?”  
You lay a hand flat over the deep wound in your side “Yeah. The water’s gonna rejuvenate me like you wouldn’t believe.”  
Sol follows Equius in “We still doing this?”  
“If you want to.”  
He looks you dead in the eyes “Give me the bottle.”  
Sol flicks the lid open and downs the contents in one gulp, before he can begin to think about what he’s doing.  
You turn to Equius “This isn’t going to be pretty. Give him a hand.”  
Nodding, the other human goes to help his friend. And gets there just in time to stop his head from slipping underneath the waves.  
When he manages to pull Sol up out of the water next, Sol isn’t himself anymore. He’s something like you. That has to be the fastest transformation you have ever seen. Normally, there is a lot more thrashing and screaming and choking on the water and their own blood.   
But Sol just springs out like nothing is wrong.  
“I thought you said it hurts.” he scowls, trying to stand again.  
When he does this, the tip of a bright golden tail rears up out of the water. He screams. Startled by his scream, Equius lets out a strangled yelp as well.  
You, on the other hand, are thrilled that the change was so easy for him “Wow! You’re split-tailed! I haven’t seen that in so long!”  
Sol’s tail is smooth and without a fluke, but instead, ridged with papery tissue that serves as his rudder. A few feet before the end of his tail, it splits into two whip-shaped segments. In the water, they’re going to work something like the rotor of those big metal things humans have to use to get around on the water- boats, or something.  
He’s gonna be so fast. You are so excited for him.  
“Thank you so much for your help, Equius.”  
The Equius human would be more open to accepting your praise if he were not standing thigh-deep in mer blood, but he gives you a very, very weak smile anyway “No problem.”  
“Eq- for fuck’s sake, this shirt. Make it stop. Help.”  
Seizing Sol’s soaked shirt by the collar, he heaves it over his friend’s head and throws the wet bundle to the shore.   
“What about your jeans?”  
“I have no fucking idea and I don’t care.”  
“That’s…that’s kind of gross.”  
“Shut up you prude. Just give me a hug, ok? I might die for fuck’s sake.”  
They exchange a very awkward and a very tender hug.  
You hear Equius whisper to him: “Make sure to come home. Even if it is just to die.”  
And Sol’s strangled reply “That’s you, isn’t it? Eq the optimist.”  
Then he lets Equius go, and the human quickly retreats to the shore. On the way there, he has to dodge around a severed arm that almost looks like it’s reaching to trip him up.  
You swim over to Sol “Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe.”  
“There are corpses floating all over the place.”  
“Shit happens. It’s not gonna happen to you. Listen, just do it for Eridan, ok?”  
From the way his jaw sets after he hears that, you know you have said the right thing.  
Sol turns to the shore once more to wave goodbye to Equius, and then he plunges into the blood-clouded water after you.  
You just hope that Eridan isn’t dead yet.


	38. The fight commences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last bit of Cronkri fluff before the big finale fight begins

Your name is Cronus Vantas.  
The city that was your childhood’s stage is gone. Not completely, but in the sense of what cities are supposed to be, it is gone.  
Cities are supposed to be able to support life. Many, many lives, all of which should be housed in homes and places of work and places to eat and places to buy and sell and trade in general. The buildings are gone, which means that the potential for sustaining lives is gone. And from the way the blood hangs over the city in a multi-coloured haze, like the pictures of smog you see every now and then when the news is flipping its shit over China’s pollution levels, you doubt anything growing will move in for a long time.   
No matter whether it’s above or below the water, there’s no real chance of supporting life so soon after a fire. The fire really has ruined the city-scape you once knew.  
The only thing which remains intact is the cage, as if to highlight the insult. Really? She destroys nearly every building in the city, but leaves the one where most of her suffering was staged standing tall and strong?  
Her sense of humour is brutal. At the same time, you’re grateful for the awful gesture, because it’s a clear sign that she expects to encounter survivors. It is good to know when your powerful enemy expects your earnest, but probably ineffective attack.  
“So, no element of surprise?” mutters Dirk bitterly.  
“Damn her to hell.” says Porrim.  
This is not the first time she has seen the ruin. But the first time she saw it, she was more distracted by the arrival of her half-brother’s son, so she didn’t really have a chance to marvel at the sublime destruction the Condesce has brought about.  
This unnerves you. What kind of enemies might she be expecting, to have left such an obvious message that she is still around? Certainly not enemies like you- the threat you pose is going to be about as dangerous as a kitten’s sneeze is to a lion. Like, not even an attack. Just an irritant.  
Then it strikes you: your father.  
“My father,” is your contribution.  
Eridan picks up where you left off “Yeah. Daddy’s gonna rip her fuckin’ head off. Look at how this place is set up…she left the cage open an’ glowin’ an’ shit. Tell me that ain’t cos she’s expectin’ him and Bro.”  
“I concur.” says Dave stiffly.  
He doesn’t seem to be happy at the thought of his father waging a two-man war on the sea’s most tyrannical inhabitant.  
Terezi, on the other hand, is delighted. Possibly because she is related to neither of the mers who will be laying their lives on the line to defend her. “That’s a good thing. Here’s an idea…we wait for the big guys to show up, and when they do, we let them fight her for a while. She thinks she’s only fighting two guys, right? And then we fly in out of nowhere and stab the shit out of her.”  
Dave rolls his eyes “Beautifully explained, Terezi. What do you plan to attack her with? We haven’t got knives or spears. We wasted those all on the beasts that attacked us.”  
John bares his teeth and speaks through them “If I can dig through an eye twice my size with my fingernails, you can take a nip outta the hide of the Condesce, ok?”  
As the others discuss the plan of action for exactly how and where they’re going to bite the Condesce, Kankri shrinks into your side. He has been uncharacteristically silent for the last few moments. Ever since the group settled in the kelp fields for shelter, where Eridan and the still-missing Feferi first saw the destruction of their home, he has sat practically in your lap with his arm about your waist and his head turned slightly in, so that his cheek rests on your collarbone.  
While this is refreshing and intimate after the amount of time you have had to spend apart, it is also concerning. Normally, when there’s a conversation raging and lives possibly depend on it (although you doubt he has participated in many of those life-changing conversations), he’s sure to dive head-first into the debate and claim the spot-light. Of course, he has tried to reform himself so as not to become the centre of attention each time he participates in a debate. It hasn’t really worked. The only change Kankri has made is that he has become slightly more interesting and coherent to those who do not have an Oxford reading-level, so he’s actually kind of fun to listen to.  
But now?  
No, he’s freaking out.  
If he were feeling at all ok with his surroundings, he would not be sitting here in silence.  
“Hey, guys?”   
They all turn to you at once, leaving sentences hanging in the water. Even Terezi looks in your rough direction, though her patience is plainly being tested.  
“We’ll be right over there,” you nod to a small clearing a little ways down the slope of kelp.  
“Are you guys gonna make out?” asks Dave.  
“David.” says Dirk, cuffing him lightly “If he wants us to know, then Cronus will tell us.”  
Porrim seems reluctant to let you go, but she doesn’t protest  
Eridan, on the other hand “Fuck that! W-what if you die?!”  
“Then so do you, if we’re gettin’ killed about thirty feet aw-way from you.”  
Before he can engage you in a genuine argument about whether or not you should be allowed to move twenty feet away from him, you give Kankri a gentle nudge in the right direction to set him off. He starts going, but you don’t like the look on his face. Seems he kinda forgot you were there, from the way he startles at the gentle touch.  
When you have guided him over to the clearing, you do a quick scan-around for anything that looks looming or threatening. Nothing. The water is completely empty in these parts, except for your group. You don’t blame the wildlife for staying away from this wasteland. The smell of death would scare you right the hell off too, if you didn’t have to be here.  
Turning back to Kankri, you are surprised to see that he is already lying on his back, waiting for you. You lay down next to him. For a long moment, the two of you contemplate each other.  
In your college days, this was how you would wake up most mornings. Kankri always woke up before you, but you didn’t like him getting up before you. You never specifically told him this. There were plenty of times when he got out of bed in the small hours of the morning, or at a perfectly reasonable hour while you snoozed steadily on ‘til noon, dreaming about the reports on the human world you needed to draw up in between homework and study, and dreading them.  
However, when there was no pressing deadline nor an appointment to make, Kankri was happy to stay in bed for the extra twenty or thirty minutes it took for you to wake up.  
He kept a bed on the nightstand for your longer spells as a defence against boredom, but seldom touched whatever volume it was. Instead, he watched you sleep. You never specifically told him you wanted to get up at the same time because you hated missing his shape and his body heat beside you, and he never told you he liked watching the shadows of your eyelashes sweep this way and that as your eyes followed dreams under the lids…but you knew.  
Most of the things you have not said to each other have remained unspoken because there is little need to voice it.  
So many of your mornings started like this. A lot of the married life, too. Catching him staring. Your eyes opened before he could completely wipe the look of wonder and gratefulness from his face.  
Wonder: were you really here, and were you really his?  
Gratefulness: for choosing a life with him as oppose to the throne of an underwater wonderland.  
“It wasn’t really a choice.”  
Kankri cocks an eyebrow “Hmm?”  
“You or the throne. Choices are made with logic most of the time, right?”  
“There are choices made with passion all the time.”  
“A choice implies that you can either have one thing or another thing. That they’re in competition with each other. So it wasn’t a choice or a decision anything. It was common sense.”  
“That’s close to logic.”  
“Logic’s stuff like…math and shit. I’m taking about basic survival instinct. Don’t stick your hand in a fire, cos it’ll hurt like hell and your hand will go all red and puffy. Same thing.”  
He blinks slowly. For a second, you think he has fallen asleep.  
“You would have died if you didn’t come and live on the land to be with me?”  
“That’s about the sum of it.”  
“Metaphysically?”  
“Metaphysically.” you trace the line of his jaw with a knuckle, and notice in embarrassment how scarred the knuckle is. Probably a little too rough to be touching your husband’s face with “And I probably woulda offed myself. I’m just no good for the throne.”  
“I can’t imagine you having responsibility over another bunch of people’s lives.” he allows himself a gentle, wry smile “Which is why we’re never having children.”  
“Yer a terrible person.”  
He grows serious again, although the smile somehow manages to cling to the corner of his mouth “I get what you mean. The pressure of a kingdom on your shoulders would be too much. An unwelcome burden. It’s not really your fault that you were raised to bear it.”  
“Like…kinda like bein’ born in a cult, yeah? Then scrammin’ the hell outta there when yer big enough, an’ leavin’ yer parents and all, an’ everyone you ev-ver knew. Just something you gotta do. For you.”  
A silence stretches between you.  
Twenty feet away, the others are still trying to figure out what they should do. Jake’s all for sitting on their tails until the Condesce and his moirail show up. Porrim argues vehemently, insisting that the Condesce might be dead for all they know. Dirk flinches every time she says this, no doubt reasoning that his own father will be dead if the Condesce is.  
You can feel Eridan’s eyes on your back, scratching at you with the uneasy, nervous energy of a child who wants his guardian to come back from the bathroom and retrieve them from a busy mall avenue.  
You would look at him, just to flash a reassuring smile and to mouth ‘be brave for Tentaboo’, but you find it impossible to tear your eyes from Kankri’s.  
“Cronus.”  
“What, babe?”  
“I think my father left because of yours.”  
“Why do you think that?”  
“I think they were in love with each other. Not for long. Not very deeply either, but it was just long enough to change their friendship into something neither of them quite knew what to do with.”  
A disturbing idea flits across your mind “Ya know…I nev-ver knew my other parent.”  
Kankri’s face folds in disgust “Oh for the love of Allah, Cronus! We’re not half-brothers! That’s absolutely revolting! Good Lord. Just…yuck.”  
You grin sheepishly “Sorry, honey. You’re right, though. We don’t look a thing alike.”  
He shakes his head at you in his ‘what am I going to do with you?’ way.  
“So, you were sayin’? Why yer old man really left the place?”  
“Well I think it may have been to get away from your father. Or perhaps it was an issue of safety? I wouldn’t know, but I am fairly certain that our families have affected each other far more than we have been told…I always wondered why my father could have possibly wanted to move. He enjoyed his church and his friendships so much. Karkat was settled in nicely, and so was I. And to take us all away from that? There had to be a reason better than the one he give me.”  
“What did he say again? He needed a change-”  
“A change of scenery to give him a better appreciation of God’s work.”  
You have to laugh again, even though you know you’re laughing at the expense of a man you have actually come to like a good bit “That’s really somethin’.”  
“You know, I don’t even think the man was religious. He converted from Islam to piss his parents off, just like I converted back to piss him off.”  
“Yer doin’ a horrible job, you big flamin’ homo.”  
He smiles “I follow the teachings of the Prophet, peace be upon him, in my own way.”  
Another silence.  
In the background, you can hear Jake saying: “…whatever happens I am not willing to offer myself up as a virgin sacrifice.”  
And then Terezi: “We all know you’re not qualified for that.”  
Some raucous laughter.  
Twisting his neck, Kankri glances back at them “They don’t seem to be in touch with how much danger we’re all in.”  
“Well we’re not exactly talking about the inevitable death hanging over us, are w-we?”  
He looks you dead in the eye “Maybe we should.”  
You know that look too.  
That’s a look that cannot be argued with.  
“Is it really inevitable?”  
He wants to know how likely you think it is all of you are going to die. Well, this would be a lot easier to discuss if you had some kind of convenient chart on hand to explain to him your chances.  
The bottom of the scale would be ‘honey, everything will be fine. The top of the scale would be ‘honey, we’re going to die painfully, slowly, and probably watching each other die at the same time’.  
You decide to water it down a little to make the information easier to digest “The mer we’re going up against…think of Hitler, except as a fish.”  
“Wow.”  
“And a little worse, ‘cos she didn’t specifically target any group. Just…every group, I guess.”  
Kankri frowns. He puts his head in the curve of your neck and stares at the layers of water overhead. The surface is barely visible as a handful of freckles of light, dappling a dark curtain of blue and black and a few especially sinister greys.  
God, when did your own home start to frighten you?  
“What did she do?” he asks softly.  
“She was the Condesce before my father’s mother. Grandma Eridan.”  
“I suppose that’s where your Eridan got his name from?”  
You nod “Her reign was kinda just one long nightmare. Other mer cities still hate our people for what the Condesce did when she was runnin’ around an’ rulin’ things…I mean, she’s kinda tryin’ ta do that again, ain’t she? But…yeah, they ain’t got no one to blame but us, ‘cos we’re all that survived her. Grandma Eridan banished her first, then she came back, after Eridan was dying on her deathbed, and it was up to my dad to do something about it. The first thing he did was escape up here on his mother’s orders. Bro, Dirk’s father, was knocking around somewhere on this coast too, only he didn’t go up on the land. He was watching my dad to make sure your dad didn’t kill him.”  
Kankri’s frown deepens “So…so I think I might have missed that part of the story, where our parents were housemates for a while.”  
“Well the way I hear it, your father was left alone for a few weeks one summer while his mother went into the water to help the dyin’ Condesce fight the old banished Condesce.”  
“My grandmother was a mer? So that would make me a quarter mer?”  
“I guess. I reckon as long as you got some mer blood in you, you can be all the w-way mer if you w-wanna.”  
“I’m hesitant to offend you.”  
“Go ahead.”  
“But I think I prefer the dry land.” he says quickly.  
You laugh weakly “After this? Me too, babe.”  
“What is it that she did that made her so hated?” he asks again, eager to change the subject from a possible offence he might have caused, to the exploits of a serial killing dictator renowned for her brutality.  
Bless his heart.  
“She did stuff like that. Smaller scale most of the time. Let’s just say this city was a lot of little villages until she…she worked on them, and made them like that, and then put all the survivors in a place she could rule them easy. The city kinda started life as a prison camp.”  
Kankri swallows hard “She is beginning to sound a good deal like Hitler. So…your grandmother and my grandmother defeated her together?”  
“They did. At the last minute, my dad jumped in to help them out. Kind of like the way we’re going to help, I guess…”  
“When did he tell you all this?”  
“The story of how he and the grandmothers beat down the Sea Witch was my favourite bed time story when I was a fry- um, a kid.”  
Kankri’s face grows troubled “My father never told me any of this. Though I suppose he had his reasons…the main one being that he knew I wouldn’t believe him when I was older, and that if he told me when I was younger, it might affect me in some way…I suppose he didn’t want me to grow up in fear…or he might just have been too afraid to tell me. There’s just one thing I don’t get.”  
You’ve been thinking the same thing “How your grandmother left the house to us? Seems pretty convenient that the house is just a little ways away from the city, doesn’t it?”  
He nods “Do you think she died in the city, with the others?”  
You shake your head “Oh, no, no way! Maryam was missing for a lot of years. I guess those were the years she spent living as your grandmother.”  
“I didn’t see her that much. And when she left the house to us? Where did she go? Back to the water, I guess….but if she’s in the water still, then why isn’t she here, helping us fight?”  
“That’s where Bro and my dad went, I bet. Eridan hasn’t said anything about Dad telling him where he was going when he left him on the land…”  
You trail off, suddenly disturbed by a thought.  
What if…what if Maryam won’t be joining the war effort at all? You can understand her keeping her distance during the peace-time. After all, she had given enough of herself, of her blood and her energy, to keep the city safe during war. The way that your father spoke of her, you had her in your mind as some kind of benevolent guardian that would reveal herself in the most trying times of hardship that the city faced.  
Otherwise, she stayed away to live her own life in relative peace.  
And now the city has literally been annihilated. The Maryam you knew through the stories would have returned to wreak some vengeance, right? Well, where is she?  
The people who idolised her as a hero are all dead now. Her own child is back in the water, along with a grandson, while the other half of her descendants wait in terror on the land for their deaths.   
And yet, she’s nowhere to be seen?  
That does not bode well.  
You have a sinking feeling that whatever happens with the Sea Witch is going to have to happen without a finger raised in help from Maryam. She might as well be dead, for all the good she is going to do you.  
“Cronus…this is going to be a very bloody battle, isn’t it?”  
You find it difficult to speak around a conspicuous lump in your throat, but manage a simple: “Yeah, babe.”  
His face is grim “What do you want me to do?”  
“I’ve been thinking about that. You know you’re not a fighter, right? The rest of us have been trained in the art of tail-kicking all of our lives, but you’re a psychologist. I just…I want to hide you somewhere, but I don’t know where I can put you that the Condesce can’t find you and use you against us.”  
Alarmed, he again scans the dark water, as if the Witch might loom from the darkness on cue to abduct him “You think she would?”  
“I know she would. She’d find you…so the best thing is for you to stay here, but out of the fight. It would take way too long to get you back to shore, and I don’t want to leave Eridan down here.”  
You want to explain yourself a little more, but he puts a finger over your lips “It’s alright. I understand. It’s acceptable to me to be a deadweight, for now…but mark my words, if I see an opening and I think I can do something, then I’m shooting straight for it.”  
At this point, all you can do is trust his judgement. It’s not such a bad option; you have trusted him basically since the moment you met him in college.  
“Alright, we have an idea!” announces Dirk, for you to hear as well “It’s not a very good idea, but we’re going to go with it because we’ve got nothing else.”  
“I think that’s our cue to go back.” says Kankri.  
“Yep.” you say.  
You don’t ask him to swim the hell away with you, even though you want to so badly you can kind of taste the desire.   
Dirk gives you a strange look when you settle at his side. Somehow, he knows what ran through your head as you were swimming back, and doesn’t know how to thank you for resisting the compulsion. By way of response, you take his hand and squeeze it comfortingly. And hard enough to hear his knuckles pop.  
“What’s the plan?” you ask, making an effort to sound prepared and sane.  
“Yeah,” says a voice overhead.  
At that moment, a heavy, billowing shadow falls over the group.  
“Let’s hear it.” says the Sea Witch.


	39. How to (hopefully) avoid being killed by under-water Hitler

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here she is, folks, the Sea Witch herself.  
> Watch her go, now.

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you’re not sure if there is anything you can do.  
After Equius went missing, and Nepeta had finished panicking everyone with her theories of abduction or murder, you and your friends did the sensible thing and went down to the water.  
In hindsight, now that you know how the water looks, it really wasn’t a smart decision to come down here. More like a really, really good way to put yourself off swimming for the rest of your life.  
“How come their blood is different colours?” asks Aradia.  
She is well-known in your friendship group for asking the weird, slightly irrelevant questions when there are much bigger things to address.   
She doesn’t want to know what killed them. She doesn’t want to know why it had to happen. She doesn’t want to know if they think it’s going to be alright, and if Sollux will manage to return to the surface unharmed.   
Aradia is curious about the fucking blood colour. Typical Aradia.  
“I don’t know,” you say reasonably “Why don’t we ask the more important questions instead, such as…what the fucking fuck we’re going to do?”  
Equius answers that question by demonstration. He strips off his bloody shirt, flings it up towards the dunes, and sits back on the sand, reclining on his elbows.  
“We wait.” he says simply.  
“Do we all have to take our shirts off?” you ask.  
He gives you a stern look.  
One by one, the others follow his example and drop into the sand. Nepeta cuddles up to him, perfectly platonic and perfectly comfortable. Aradia plunks down not far away from them and starts to build a sandcastle in the circle her outstretched legs and her feet, pressed together in the centre. Looks like a gigantic phallus to you, but you don’t need to tell her that. She is probably actually building one.  
Gamzee has to tug insistently on your sleeve a few times before you give in and plant your ass in the sand.  
You can’t really explain why you think they’re going to come back in one piece, and much faster, if you stay standing. Like, maybe if you manage to stay on your feet for the entire time it takes them to get back from whatever the hell is happening underwater, you will have suffered physically enough yourself that they can come back unharmed.  
Kankri, too.  
Kankri the most, actually.  
But Gamzee isn’t having any of that. Besides, it doesn’t even really make sense, does it?  
You relent. You sit beside Gamzee and let him rest his head on your shoulder.  
After a while, where the only noise is the sound of the waves and Nepeta sighing through her nose a few times, you say “I think there’s something really wrong with me.”  
The others don’t answer. They know you are talking to Gamzee and chose to pretend he is the only one who can hear you.  
“There ain’t nothin’ wrong with you,” he says softly “I’m the one in therapy, ‘member?”  
“No, but…not something I can explain. I just know there’s something wrong with me. Deeply, profoundly wrong with me.”  
Gamzee shakes his head, slowly, barely moving at all “I don’t think that’s a truth, there, brother. I think that thinking somethin’ in y’all is all fucked up is what’s fucked up about’cha.”  
You grow irritated in spite of yourself “Well, riddle me this. If there’s nothing wrong, then why did I ignore all of my best friends? Why did I not talk to you for so long, especially, you, Gamzee. You’re, like, the most important person there is on the planet and I never tell you that and so you don’t know it and…and it’s just a giant fucking mess. And now Kankri’s missing and Sollux is a mermaid and the whole world is going to end.”  
There’s a pause as Gamzee searches for something appropriate to respond to this with.  
But he can think of nothing. So, instead of tossing some hollow comforts at you, he just takes your hand and squeezes it, hard.

Karkat Vantas: be Cronus Vantas =========>  
Cronus Vantas: die ===================>

Your name is Cronus Vantas, and you really don’t want to.   
To die, that is, but it doesn’t seem like the Sea Witch is going to give you much choice in the matter. It occurs to you; for all of the stories you’ve heard, the likenesses and drawings and performances that were supposed to represent her in art, your and your society’s interpretation of her is not really anything close to how she really looks.  
She’s not the leering, ferocious beauty you were lead to believe.  
The billowing hair is right. The grimace of a grin with every single tooth bared and eager to sink into flesh is right. The thick waist, voluminous bust and wide hips are also right.  
But she’s actually not that pretty. She’s plain. Plain in the way that she could be very, very pretty if she were a kind, smiling person, instead of some weird dictator come to reclaim the ruins of her former kingdom by finishing off its last survivors.  
But because she is using her face to growl and smile in a way that reminds you of the default expressionless expression of a shark, she is horrifically ugly.  
So ugly, in fact, that it paralyses your body and mind, to the point that you cannot do anything but clutch Kankri and think ‘Jesus Christ she is ugly’.  
“Go on,” she urges “Tell us the mother-glubbin’ plan. I wanna know ev’ry krill-sized detail.”  
In one hand, she twirls a golden trident about the same size as you. The prongs add about two feet of length on top of that, so really, she’s got something that is almost as tall as she is. Which is saying something, considering she’s soon going to be killing you all with that thing.  
Dirk has gathered Dave up and put himself squarely in front of his little brother and John. Porrim has done the same for Terezi, more out of a sense of duty, you believe, than any loyalty.   
You, for your part, are not even aware of touching Eridan until you have moved him behind you. Slowly, cautiously. Wary of any sudden movements that might provoke the old Condesce to spring at you.  
There is no feasible way that you will manage to defeat her. For the last four years, you’ve been basically a human, and you haven’t needed to hunt your dinner or fight for your life at all. Kankri’s battles are fought in the mind and for the mind, so he’s going to have next to no idea of how to physically defend himself either.  
John, Dave and Terezi are all children. No matter what they think they can do, and how many squid eyes John claws his way through, they are just children and therefore essentially useless against this bastard.  
Porrim and Dirk are going to have to do the majority of whatever fighting you may manage, before she grows tired of the sport and slaughters you.  
Unless.  
Unless…  
Ok, you have an idea.  
“The plan?” you speak up.  
Kankri squeezes your arm, begging you to remain silent. You squeeze his arm back, telling him to trust you. When you peel yourself from his grasp, he immediately takes Eridan by the arm, and puts himself between the Sea Witch and your little brother. Doing what he can, you guess.  
Her eyes fall on you.  
The sensation is of being stabbed in the chest, where she seems to have trained her eyes. She’s looking you over, you think, to see how much of a resemblance you bear to the man who stuck her inside that dome with nothing to do but think about how much she wanted to hurt him for doing so.  
Thanks, Pa, you think, really good fucking job there.  
You scrounge up the strength to stare back at her. To dare you to question you and to be challenged herself. You probably wouldn’t be able to do this, without Eridan and Kankri behind you.  
Scratch Eridan. This surge of bravery is Kankri’s fault entirely.  
“I don’t know-w if there is a plan.” you say after a few long moments “W-we w-were just kinda plannin’ to swim away.”  
She cocks a single, slim eyebrow, which reminds you of what a minnow looks when it’s turned sideways “Re-eel-ly?”  
God, she’s doing the same thing Fef and Meenah do. The inappropriate, unfunny fish-puns that make talking to them like deciphering an incredibly complex, nonsensical code. Did they learn that, or did they just do that without knowing who it was they were emulating?  
“Really,” you repeat “There’s not much we can do against you, is there? But I gotta ask…that spell you used on the land, and the fire you used on the city…how did you do that?”  
Her smile grows playful, as if you’re asking after the secret ingredient of her best recipe “Had ta do somefin fun whale I was stuck up in there, didn’t I?”  
A shudder travels up your spine. You fight the urge to scream in her face, as she draws closer.  
“I guess you could call that fun.”   
“What would y’all call it?”  
“I’d say…I’d say it was a really unfortunate use of your time.”  
She lets out a laugh like nails on rusted metal “Whew, buoy! You are somefin, ain’t’cha! You an’ yer old pa…you ain’t that much alike.”  
You aren’t very interested in deciphering that comment. Instead, you want to get started on implementing that idea.  
Now, how to distract her?  
“I gotta ask…listen, w-we lost a few-w people a while back. In the first days. We lost somebody really important to one of our people, in fact, right here…”  
You aren’t sure if you want to do this to John. There are two possible outcomes; either he breaks down, or he loses his shit completely and attacks the Sea Witch. Dave better have a strong hand on him, or you might be about to lose another mer. Mers are in very short supply right now.  
Surprisingly, her eyes light up “Y’all mean the little blue mer? Yeah, shit, I krilled that one. Tore her right the fuck in half. Had me an itch fer some krillin’, an the way she ran? Well, fuck, I’d have ta be Gog ta resist the shrimp-tation to give the chase.” She glances past you “Which one of y’all lost her, then? Which one of ya poor, sad guppies is John? She was screamin’ fer a John at the end of it.”  
You risk a look back as well, in time to see John collapsing backwards into Dave’s arms.  
Good, good. That’s going to make your idea a lot easier to execute.   
But the Sea Witch isn’t done taunting him yet “She was easy prey, ya know? Little mer, real close to my cage. When I got out, she musta been the first guppy I did see out here. Cast me a good spell that I’d been cookin’ up fer so many years, I can’t even remember how much now, then I stretched my tail. Had to chase that little mer for miles, though. When I finally caught the fucker, I was so mad, I was be-sea-side myself, so I just kinda…ripped her the fuck in half, didn’t I? How about it John, how bad was her body messed up?”  
He doesn’t respond.  
Dave does, instead “That’s enough out of you.”  
The Sea Witch is delighted by this. Again, her eyes light up with the kind of evil glee you didn’t know was possible outside of cheesy cartoon villains “And which one is this? This is Broderick’s fry, ain’t it? The littlest fry? And yer the bigger fry.”  
For some reason, she is looking at you when she says this.  
But she’s not; Dirk’s hand lands on your shoulder, and you nearly jump right out of your skin.   
“Yeah,” he says evenly “I’m the oldest fry.”  
“Hey, tell y’all what. I got a hankerin’ for a game ta play, after so fuckin’ long in that fuckin’ cage.” She stretches an arm over her head, keeping the trident in a firm grasp “You, the baby Cary. I can see y’all wantin’ ta run the hell away right now, so, g’head and run.”  
Your mind goes in two directions at once.  
One direction is sheer panic, demanding to know how she somehow knew what you were planning; to distract her with cheap talk and maybe a few false jabs so the others could escape to the relative safety of the city ruins, and hide until (if it happened) yours and Dirk’s fathers showed up to save the day.  
The other direction thinks along the lines of, yes, good, I can make this work.  
She wants to play a game?  
Fine.  
“Alright,” you say casually “But I won’t play with you unless you follow some rules.”  
“Rules?” she repeats, her eyes sparkling with amusement “What motherfuckin’ rules you gonna ray on me, then?”  
“You can’t chase us until we’ve made it into the city limits. No pot shots at our backs. No attacking until we’ve had a chance to get to the buildings and get into some cover.”  
“Oh yeah? Why should I?”  
You swallow on a dry throat “Well, the object of a game is to have as much fun as possible, right? Not to win. Only whackos and losers think the object of a game is to win, and since yer so pow-werful already, well, what’s the fuckin’ point if w-we don’t get a bit of help?”  
“Otherwise, the game will be over too fast.” Dirk chips in “And you probably won’t be able to…to play with anyone else until, you know, you destroy the next city.”  
She snorts, producing a stream of grey bubbles from her nose “Oh, lookit’cha. He knows all my plans al-ray-dee, don’t he? Maybe you better gimme an idea of what yer lookin’ ta make me do ‘fore you make me commit, yeah?”  
“Yeah.”  
This had better fucking work.  
“Just no pot-shots. No shooting until we’ve all made it to the city. All of us. If you shoot or stab or whatever before then, then it’s cheating. I don’t know why someone as powerful as you w-would have to cheat against, well.” you gesture at yourself, then at those behind you “This rag-tag little outfit. I mean, that one’s not even a mer.”  
It’s a risk pointing out Kankri specifically. If she knows how and why he’s important to you, then she’s more likely to try helping herself to his blood. That’s good, if she does. That means you’ve got more of a chance of attacking her successfully, because there is no way you’re leaving Kankri undefended for even a second of this fight. Eridan, too, is going to have to stay glued to your side for peace of mind.  
Peace of pan.  
God, or Gog, you don’t even know anymore.  
“Ready?” you ask.  
The Sea Witch makes a noise of surprise “So soon?”  
“What, you got somethin’ else to do?”  
She grins again “Nah, guppy. Nofin else planned.”  
“So let’s go, then.”  
Your breath seems to freeze in your gills for the next few seconds, as you turn your back to the Sea Witch, take Dirk’s hand and make for the city.  
Funny, how her idea and your idea were exactly the same thing.

Dave gets to the city first.   
John is behind him- he seems to have recovered enough to swim like that, but perhaps his anger at losing Vriska to the Sea Witch has fuelled him for the sprint.  
He and Dave split off into the ruins of what you think used to be a school. By now, your memory of your city has corroded to the point that you barely know which way is up and which way is down anymore. It doesn’t help, either, that the Sea Witch’s involvement has rendered most of the place unrecognisable.  
You are satisfied that they will manage to hide themselves there, so you don’t bother trying to follow them. Your aim is to get yourself in a wide open space. Trapping yourself in closed quarters with the Sea Witch would be an alright idea, if you were somehow able to strike back at her with as much ferocity as she is sure to rush you with, but you just don’t.  
You would die in the first ten seconds, probably.  
But with an open space? Maybe you’d make it as long as a minute. The object of the game is to stall for as long as possible, anyway, so it might even be better to stay swimming until your father shows up.   
The problem is Kankri. Kankri can’t swim at full pelt for extended periods of time. Even now, you and Porrim, some of the fastest swimmers, have had to stick to the back of the pack to make sure Kankri doesn’t get left behind.  
Eridan is fine. In fact, Eridan is the third one to hit the city. Behind him is Terezi, so close that when he pauses, contemplating which way to turn in the ruined avenue, she crashes straight into him. They go sprawling in different directions and do not reappear from the shadows of the city.  
Jake gets to the city limits about three seconds after the collision, and swims straight over some of the buildings until he spots something that seems satisfactory as a hiding place, and dives for it.  
He, too, goes completely invisible.  
Good. This is looking good so far.  
Next is Dirk. With one last, sad look at you over his shoulder (you understand; you just got him back and now this?), he swims off in the direction that Dave seems to have taken. You sincerely hope they find each other. Dave is still way too young to be doing this.  
With any luck, you’re going to find Eridan.  
But just in case you don’t, you turn to Porrim and say breathlessly “Porrim, she doesn’t know who you are. Or Kankri. She hasn’t recognised either of you.”  
She shushes you furiously, sounding like an angry cat “Don’t tell her who I am now, then!”  
You shake your head impatiently “If it looks like it’s going bad for one of us, do your Maryam thing.”  
She scowls “We don’t have a Maryam thing.”  
“Yes we do,” retorts Kankri, who has apparently accepted his unusual familial situation whole-heartedly “That not giving up thing. That thing where we’re so stubborn that people have literally tried to kill us. I had some kid threaten to shoot me in the mouth in high-school, in the middle of a class-room debate, because I wouldn’t stop making my point. It’s that Maryam-Vantas thing,” he coughs and chokes on his last words “Do that thing.”  
“And keep Eridan safe if I die.” you add.  
“You’re not going to die.” says Porrim sternly, as if saying it sternly enough is going to make you too afraid of whatever punishment she might have for disobedience to kick the bucket.  
You don’t argue, however.  
And the next thing you know, you’re in the city.  
A feeling of panic threatens to take over you- but you don’t really have enough time to process, register and feel it.  
Instead, you just kind of grab Kankri and pull him off to the left of an avenue, made shadowed and dark by the clouds of ashes and blood that still hangs over the city in grisly sheets. No sooner than you’re around the corner does the Sea Witch shoot something fast and fiery at the spot where you and Kankri were a second before.  
The shock of the blast creates a kind of underwater shock-wave that tosses you into the half-burnt façade of a building. Mercifully, Kankri escapes the wave, and is able to pull you out of the rubble before the building can properly collapse in and around you. The explosion that resulted when the fire-ball made contact with the ground has caused another building to come down. It is the splintered remains of a tower, which sways this way and that, threatening to collapse either way, before finally shivering and splitting exactly down the middle.  
You catch Kankri around the waist and pull him into an alley, off the main boulevard. Approximately five seconds later, a thunderous crash reverberates through the water as one half of the scorched tower falls along the boulevard. Pieces of shrapnel are launched high, and being to sink back like flakes of over-sized, black snow.   
“Shit!” whispers Kankri.  
A ribbon of blood unfurls from his left forearm. Somehow, a piece of shrapnel whizzed by without you noticing and cut him. The cut is wide, and deep.  
“I’m going to leave a trail, aren’t I?” his eyes grow wide with a combination of fear and anger “God fuck it. Allahu akbar. This is ridiculous.”  
You hate it when he swears. That’s how you know he’s about to lose it.  
Closing his hand over the cut, you say “Keep moving.”  
She is most likely to hit the edge of the city, while approaching. With this in mind, you lead him from the alley and to another wide avenue, which is half-destroyed by the hulking, burnt corpses of rubble that litter them.  
Kankri is spell-bound by all he sees, even as he swims for his life, in and out of curtains of blood and black ash “Why do you have roads?”  
“We don’t. This is just what we built it up from. Look, look at the tip of your tail. You’re not exactly walkin’, huh, babe?”  
If only you could have brought him to this place when it was alive and undisturbed by the Sea Witch. He would have loved it so much.  
Another explosion, this time, muted by distance. A bloom of fire and slow-moving smoke reaches up from the other side of the edge of the city. Roughly, in the direction that you seem to remember Jake going.   
Shit. He’d better not be dead. Well, you’re sure the Sea Witch will want to hang onto his body to taunt you with, and if not that, then it will be floating over the city in matter of minutes. You’ll know soon if anyone was hit.  
You drag him into the courtyard of a wrecked house, so fine it must have belonged to a member of your father’s court, and get a quick glimpse of a shadow of hair.   
“She’s over the city.” you mutter “From now on, we have to stay under cover.”  
Kankri nods “This may seem like a stupid question, but this game ends when either we’re all dead or one of us has killed her, yes?”  
“Yer right, babe, that is a stupid question.”  
He snorts with breathless and terrified amusement.  
Her next shot knocks over another tower. This time, instead of splitting down the middle, the tower instead scatters in every direction, the coral and stone it was built from blowing apart like leaves. Evidently, she is trying to clog the streets and destroy the most obvious hiding places. That way, instead of darting around and hiding from her forever, soon, you’ll have to brave the unprotected area over the city to try to find a place on the city streets that hasn’t yet been crushed completely.  
Clever.  
And she is definitely toying with you.  
But on the bright side you have yet to see Jake’s mangled corpse float up and over the city. And there have been no screams of agony or fear, which either means she has yet to hit anyone, or that she has and they died too quickly to scream.  
You hope Dirk found his little brother and John. You hope Porrim’s got Eridan with her. You hope your father isn’t dead, because your whole plan kind of hinges on him coming in to save the day.  
“I’m bleeding very badly, I think.”  
Blood slips through Kankri’s finger. She will definitely smell that; it’s so much fresher than the rest of the stuff in the water, it’s going to attract her like a shark to an injured seal. There’s an attractive thought, right there.  
“It’s fine,” you lie “It’s alright. She won’t notice.”  
“I think she might. I can smell my own blood like…like nothing else I’ve ever smelled. It’s a very strong scent.”  
You guide him into the side passage of a low building the Sea Witch isn’t likely to hit “You’re just not used ta smellin’ with a mer’s nose, babe. I promise ya, it ain’t very strong.”  
“You’re still a terrible liar.”  
This hiding place quickly proves to be a terrible one. The roof has been ripped entirely off , some time in the first wave of attacks, and the interior is in disarray. Out of the dozens of columns that fell when they no longer had a roof to support, at least a third of them have pinned a body underneath it. When you notice the pillars are cracked, you get another, slightly more diabolical idea.  
“Kanny, flatten yerself against that wall and don’t mov-ve until I’ve called ya, ok?”  
He complies, but he doesn’t look at all happy about it.  
The pillars prove far easier to move than you thought they would be. They are hollow on the inside, so it’s essentially like shifting giant pieces of stony foam. Frankly, you’re surprised these pillars managed to pin anything down at all.  
Kankri watches you with a fascinated disgust as you free body after body. They rise, reminding you vaguely of crushed puppets being pulled slowly up by their strings. You work quickly, knowing that the Sea Witch will be intrigued by the bodies and swim over to investigate.  
She may think she’s struck someone, until she notices the number of bodies. And the colours are all wrong too- only Porrim and Terezi are greens. Almost everyone in here is green of some description, so you must be releasing the corpses of an entire family. Indeed, almost as soon as this thought crosses your mind, you find yourself sending a little, twisted body rising for the surface.  
That’s enough.  
“That’s enough.” you beckon Kankri “Let’s get out of here.”  
He swims over, moving oddly with his cut arm. Honestly, it’s a miracle that his cut is the only injury so far.  
“You’re distracting her, right?”  
“Right. Also, kinda obeyin’ a custom. See, bodies gotta be free, no matter if they’re floatin’ or sinkin’. Sinkin’s the way we bury our people, but if it’s a battle situation, it’s fine to send ‘em up an’ floatin’ as well. The idea is that the body’s gotta go free to feed the sea that fed it for its whole life, back when it was alive.”  
His voice takes on an accusatory tone, although it is so subtle you nearly miss it presence entirely “You never told me about that.”  
“Yeah, well, I dunno. I guess I didn’t think you’d w-wanna hear about the death customs of my culture.”  
“Your culture is fascinating to me. Mainly because it’s attached to you…though I suppose it’s my culture as well.”  
The conversation is cut in half by another resounding explosion. You and Kankri watch from the relative safety of an alley, as what little remains of the skyline shivers. One half-building goes down. The corpses that drift towards the surface are tossed this way and that by the shock of the explosion. You are relieved to see the Sea Witch’s hulking, billowing figure at the edge of the small blood of bodies, inspecting them with confusion.  
Then, she must judge by the age and colour of the bodies that she has failed to kill a member of the game- that these are victims of her earlier attacks- and turns away in disgust.  
“Do you smell that?” asks Kankri.  
You’re about to ask him when the scent reaches your nose “Eridan! He’s bleeding!”  
It takes a few seconds to pinpoint the source of the smell- and of course it has to be right across the street, right out in the open.  
You risk a glance around the corner of a building, and see that the Sea Witch’s back is to you.  
“Let’s go.” you whisper.  
Kankri actually beats you to the other side. He leave a small trial of blood behind him, which you do your best to disperse by waving your hand around frantically.  
“Eridan!” you hear him say, and a moment later, you’ve crashed head-long into Porrim.  
She cusses at you and disentangles herself roughly. You barely notice. You’re too busy trying to spot your little brother (really, he’s a cousin) in the gloom. A flash of purple scales, and then he’s pulling you upright and into a shivering hug.  
You pat him on the back and surreptitiously check his sides and back for wounds “Are you alright?”  
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” he blusters, his eyes shining “Are you?”  
“All good.”  
Porrim busies herself with wrapping a length of kelp around Kankri’s cut. You don’t know where she got it from- her hair? Her ass? The latter seems far more likely.  
“Why are you bleedin’?” you demand of Eridan, so suddenly that he startles back into a wall. “Shit, sorry, kiddo! Just- why are you bleedin’?”  
“I bit my lip.” he mutters, abashed.  
Indeed, his lip is mangled and purple and shiny with blood.   
Gently, you wipe the blood that clings to his face away and do your best to shoo off the ribbons of purple blood that hover around him.  
You don’t like that look in his eyes; it’s a manic, frightened look that also manages to be an utterly thrilled, excited expression. He looks like a human child being taken to their first baseball game who has also just seen the star pitcher blasted from the pitcher’s mound by a strike of lightning.  
Of course, he seems to think he’s fighting the Sea Witch. As oppose to, you know, just hiding for his life. Well, you’re not going to correct what he thinks. If it gets him through the day, then it’s fine by you.  
“We can’t stay together.” you say.  
“The more of us there are, the easier it’s going to be to catch us.” finishes Porrim “Yeah, Cro, we know.”  
“I didn’t.” protests Eridan loyally, although it means admitting his own ignorance.  
“Alright, Kan, your arm is fine. Just try not to get any more cuts.”  
He nods somewhat sullenly. He doesn’t like being a liability, you think.  
You turn back to Eridan and find him staring at you, his eyes wide in horror “Yer not gonna leave me, are ya?”  
Oh, Gog.  
“Eri, ya know yer a w-warrior. A badass one.”  
He shakes his head “No, no I’m a child. You’ve gotta be a big brother right now and keep me safe.”  
“I- Eridan, the Condesce is comin’ fer me. I can’t risk you.”  
“You can risk him?”  
“I’m married to him.”   
He doesn’t understand, clearly, because he does not see how your marriage is essentially a matespritship. The word is just a label for a strange concept to him.  
“There’s a clause in the vows we said,” offers Kankri “’For better or for worse,’. It means I said I would stick beside him at all times even when he was in deadly danger such as now. So, the reason he can’t ask you to do the same for him is because he wouldn’t ask anyone to do that. He hasn’t asked me. Rather, he’s been told, rather firmly, that he’s going to have to allow me to come along.” His eyes land on you, and a smile that is not on his lips reaches his eyes “And we sealed it with a kiss.”  
“Ew.” says Eridan, so childishly that you can’t help but laugh at him.  
At that moment, there is an explosion so loud and so fierce you are sure you are about to be wiped away in a blossom of flame, or crushed to powder underneath rubble.  
Instead, you flatten yourself to the ground and watch in alarm as the water over the city boils with fire.  
“Oh my Gog,” breaths Eridan “Did she get someone?”  
Porrim throws an arm around his shoulder and draws him protectively into her side “No, I don’t think so. She’s getting rid of those bodies.”  
“I did that. Good idea or bad?”  
“Distracting.” says Porrim.  
“She evidently feels the need to destroy as much as she can,” adds Kankri “So why not indulge that passion? Let her keep wreaking havoc for as long as she wants- it means a little more time for us.”  
“See? This is the Maryam thing you were talking about.” finishes Porrim “And on that note, me and Eridan are going to fuck off. Come on Eridan.”  
With one last desperate look over his shoulder, he falls into Porrim’s wake and swims off after her reluctantly. It takes every ounce of will-power you possess not to call him back.  
Tugging on your arm, Kankri drags you from behind the building and pushes you across the road again. The Sea Witch’s back remains turned, mercifully, to you, as she busies herself with firing small, hopefully random fireballs at the other side of the city.  
As you’re watching her, you glimpse another few bodies rising from the city. One of them is red, which stops your heart for exactly as long as it takes for you to notice the mer’s hair is a violent blue. Decidedly not Dirk, then, or Dave.  
Much as you did for him earlier, Kankri leads you this way and that, asking every now and then if you’re ok. Your trip from the shore seems to have caught up with you. Suddenly, you’re so tired you would almost rather surrender yourself to the Sea Witch than swim another foot. But Kankri keeps you tethered to what’s important.  
To the hope to survive this bastard of a mess you’ve gotten yourself into.  
Finally, you have to stop. When you tell him this, Kankri stops you in a collapsed archway. You do recognise this building.  
“Welcome home.” you gesture around you, at the place you remember as being so grand and soaring in its forms.  
Now, it’s a jumble of bright coral and muted stone, and a clutter of fallen pillars, broken and chipped where they lay, and the odd beam of driftwood that would have served to frame the windows (which doubled as entries and exits, because when you can swim up to any level you want, it’s kind of pointless to have only one door and an elevator, or something human-ey like that, when people could just come in through the windows).  
Kankri looks stricken “This is the palace?”  
“No, not the palace. I haven’t seen the palace yet. This is where I was raised. The Condesce’s quarters.”  
“Oh, Cronus, I’m so sorry.”  
“I’m only sorry I didn’t get to carry you over the threshold,” you smile weakly “Let’s go see if my room is still intact, ok?”  
Unlike the rest of the city, the ways through this house are still marked out clearly in your mind. You can lead him through the half-destroyed passages confidently, and without making a single mistake. Your room would be exactly as you remember leaving in the night you decided to ‘die’ to be with Kankri on land, except that a section of the roof was ripped off and there’s also a gigantic hole in the wall. Though, for some reason, not a hint of the fragmented coral and stone that should be littered about has made it inside the room. All of that was piled outside.  
“I’m so tired,” you laugh without humour “I might just have to collapse in my ‘coon for a few seconds.”  
You make for the ‘coon, thinking of what a strange device it must look like to Kankri, and you’re even seriously contemplating getting into it, when you realise there is already someone in there.


	40. “Fight to the death. I’m gettin’ tired of you" ; “G’head, guppy. I’m wide open.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter in the fic that will feature fighting   
> For good, or for bad? Eh, who knows. We'll see how things turn out for our valiant heroes and their hairy antagonist.

Cronus Vantas: who the hell is this in your bed?===============>

Your name is Cronus Vantas, and there’s someone taking a snooze in your ‘coon.  
It’s the obvious person, of course. You were beginning to wonder where the hell she had gotten to, since kicking off the systematic extermination of her race.  
“Meenah!” you bark “Get up!”  
And then you smell the blood.  
“Uh, Kankri, how about you leave the room?”  
Too late; he’s already at your side. The way he hastily clasps a hand over his nose and gills tells you that he has already taken a deep draught of the royal blood in the air. Carefully, you reach into the ‘coon and turn Meenah over with as much care as you can manage. A cloud of fuchsia blood blooms from three identical holes in her chest, stomach and the base of her throat.   
“Oh my God.” you groan “That bastard.”  
Meenah’s eyes are already glazed over. She has been dead for a few minutes, at the very least. Her skin is still incredibly cold; it has yet to adjust to the temperature of the room.   
“This is…this is Meenah, isn’t it?” manages Kankri through his fingers.  
“Yeah.”  
“I’m so sorry.”  
“Don’t be, honey. She basically destroyed the world.”  
Kankri narrows his eyes “As I understand it, she merely enabled the destruction of the world.”  
“Kan, don’t try to rationalise it, ok?” you say gently “I know you w-wanna believe the best in people, but Meenah really knew what she was doing when she let her mother lose. She knew it w-was gonna mean killin’ us all, an’ I’d really appreciate it if ya just…”  
There’s a brief, uncomfortable silence. It is even worse because it allows you to hear the roar of fire and the Condesce’s laughter outside.   
Why is she laughing? Could it be she found someone to torment? You don’t think so, because then there would be screams-  
“I’m sorry. That was quite insensitive of me.” says Kankri softly.  
“Don’t let it bother you. It’s alright.”  
He slips a hand into yours “So, her mother killed her?”  
“Pretty brutally. Went all the way through, almost.”  
With one hand and your lips peeling back from your teeth in revulsion, you turn Meenah onto her stomach once again and see that, indeed, there is a row of three puncture marks you missed earlier. The rich smell of her blood is dizzying; permeating the room with a fresh, yet fetid odour. You can’t make Kankri stand in this any longer.  
So much for showing him your childhood room.   
“C’mon,” you guide him out “Pa ain’t here.”  
At the exact same moment that you re-enter the hallway, someone else does as well.  
Someone the same colour as you in both scales and, as a number of weeping cuts show you, in blood.   
He is saying, in a familiar voice you haven’t heard once since you left the water “C’mon, Broderick. He ain’t here.”  
“DAD!”  
“HOLY SHIT!” he throws up his fists to protect himself, but his face and posture softens the moment he figures out who has just called to him “Cronus! What in the fuckin’ fucks are you doing down here, boy?!”   
The venom in his voice is surprising- and stinging “W-whaddya mean, w-what am I doin’ dow-wn here? This is where my family lives!”  
“The hell it is! I sent yer brother ta the surface! Yer tellin’ me ya left him?” suddenly, he looks livid.  
You grow angry too. What does he think you are, some kind of child “I didn’t!”  
An expression of transcendent fear crosses his features- an expression you have never, ever seen before “You BROUGHT him down here?”  
Broderick pops his head into the hall and lays a hand on his shoulder “Calm down, Cary.”  
Your father takes no notice. Instead, he approaches you slowly, his hands still raised in front of him protectively. In a second, it seems he might wrap those hands around your throat “You’re tellin’ me you brought yer baby brother back into this shit?”  
Finally, you find your voice “I’m tellin’ ya Terezi did.”  
Some of the tension goes from his shoulders- evidently, because it is not you he has to punish for endangering his youngest son’s life.   
“Terezi,” rumbles Bro “Are you sure?”  
“I’m sure. Eridan says she did it as a favour for some human named Psiimon.”  
“That bastard,” growls Cary.  
“Easy, easy. There’s nothin’ you can do about it now. Don’t make me pap you in front of the kids.”  
He flicks Bro’s hand off an says, without much malice “Ya wouldn’t dare.”  
You clear your throat “By the way, Pa, this is my husband.”  
So far, Kankri has been sticking to the relative safety that hiding in the small of your back affords. Too much stimulation, you think; too much blood and ash in his new lungs and too many noises, otherwise he might have gotten between you and mediated that whole exchange.  
God, you wish your first words to your father in five years had been kinder.  
When your father sees Kankri, his eyes flash in surprise “W-what are you doin’ down here too?”  
Kankri shrugs uncomfortably “I was kidnapped…by the Condesce, I believe. I am still not sure who did it.”  
“W-well there ya fuckin’ go, Cro, another reason ya should’a stayed on the surface.”  
You bristle “Listen, we don’t have the time to bicker like this. Pa, ya can shout at me as much as ya w-want later, but there’s another son out there in desperate need for a scoldin’.”  
Growling with disgust, he gathers you up in a hard, squeezing hug. His chin digs into your crown. You don’t protest.  
In fact, you think you might be crying a little bit.  
He doesn’t hold you long enough for you to put your arms around him, which might have been a conscious choice. When he pushes you back, he holds you at shoulder’s length for a few seconds.  
What he sees does not displease him, you think.  
“You got old, son. Old in the eyes.”  
“Marriage’ll do that to ya. In a good w-way.”  
“I don’t doubt it.” he then peers around your shoulder, at Kankri.  
Whatever he says is lost to him, drowned out by a question from Bro that barely manages to be calm “My boys. You seen ‘em around?”  
“Yessir. They’re fine.”  
His relief is so obvious you feel kind of embarrassed to witness it. Like this rare display of emotion from him should be his own business.  
“I never shoulda let Dave leave the camp.” he mutters.  
“Ya know that whole place is dead?”  
Bro nods “I mean…I never should have let him go alone.”  
Apparently, Kankri and your father are done talking. Judging by your father’s face, he has not been totally disappointed by what he has seen, but neither has he been overwhelmed with amazement. You think this is a little bit unfair, but hey, he’ll learn to appreciate Kankri in the future.  
“We’re splitting up,” his announcement is punctuated by an explosion that sounds dangerously close to the building “Bro, you and Kankri are going together. Hide.”  
Bro glowers “And I suppose you and your boy are going to confront the Sea Witch all on your lonesome?”  
Your father grins at him “You know-w it! Find your boys. Get ‘em outta the city. Me an’ Cro are gonna distract her, alright?”  
Bro is your father’s moirail, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is also your father’s subordinate. When he is given a direct order, he has to follow it. No questions asked.  
Well, no flat-out objections raised, anyway.  
Kankri somehow understands this as well “Be safe, Cronus.”  
You give him the same kind of weak grin your father just flashed at his significant other “Only if you are.”  
If your father wasn’t here, you would give Kankri the kiss to end all kisses. Instead, you have to settle for a quick hug and a sneaky peck on the cheek.   
“I’ll be right back,” you whisper.  
“You better.” he responds.

 

In the few minutes (which must have been under ten) that you spent inside, the Sea Witch has doubled up her efforts. Half of the city which was not yet razed to the ground has been razed to the ground. Save one tower which she is circling restlessly, no towers remain standing.  
The Sea Witch’s hair is so long that, as she makes tight circles around the tower and fires at random, the ends of her hair brushes her tail. She’s got so much of it, you can imagine her getting tangled up in it easily.  
There’s an idea.  
“These bodies,” says your father under his breath, although it’s not like she’s going to hear him over the ruckus she is making “They’re old. You did that?”  
You nod “To distract her.”  
“Good thinking…except that one looks kinda fresh.”  
When he says this, the two of you have just passed into an alley that has been covered over by a section of wall that somehow managed to fall from its original building and landed, propped up between two smaller dwellings, without shattering. Your view of the outside is obscured.   
“What colour?” you ask, panic flaring in your chest.  
Not Eridan. Not Dirk. Not any of them, please.  
When you pass out into the open again, your father points out the fresher corpse he has spotted.  
“Blue.” he says “It’s a blue corpse.”

Feferi Pexies: what’s with all this broken Golems? ===========>

Your name is Feferi Pexies, and, to Sol’s credit, though he’s jumping at his own wake he has done well so far when it comes to sticking right beside you. When you made him swear he wouldn’t stray, he actually listened.  
In fact, he stays so close it is hard to complete a stroke without accidentally bumping into some part of him. You don’t really mind. Better than having to look back every few seconds to make sure your jittery little companion hasn’t been picked off by a predator, or choked on his new and inexperienced lungs or something equally probable and unfortunate.  
Part of the reason you don’t really mind is that you are too focused on imagining what might be going on with the Sea Witch, your bastard of a mother, and the others to really devote the energy that would be required to feel irritated with Sollux.  
She has probably already killed all of them. Not that you really know who is where or what’s going on or what you are going to do when you get to the remains of the city.  
However, you can be sure from the gigantic float or corpses that were washing up on the beach as you took to the water that most of your people are dead. There’s nothing to be done about that; it’s a simple, sad truth, and you’re going to have to find some way to live with it.  
To live with yourself. You could have stayed behind and opposed her in some way.  
You would have made little to no difference against the Sea Witch. Her magic is the ancient and powerful kind that needs to be forgotten and lost to the ages; it was made for fighting the predators which roamed the oceans, when humankind was still limited to that first, intrepid monkey in the future Africa, leaving their tree to see how the ground would feel under their feet.  
Had you been there to oppose her, your mother would have torn you down and scattered the little pieces in the flames that ate the city up.   
Because your mind is squarely focussed on this and things like this, it is Sollux who notices the dead Golems.  
“What are those things?”  
His lisp has travelled into the speech he now uses, and it’s strange to hear your language butchered by a speech impediment that nearly doesn’t exist where you’re from (you only know what it is because Eridan pulled you aside to tell you, so you would stop giggling at the way Sollux messed up his S’s).  
“What things?” it takes a bit of willpower on your part not to hiss out the ‘s’ the way he does.  
“Those things.” he points to a rocky shelf you are drawing near to.  
Lying on the shelf is the remains of a Golem.  
Your immediate instinct is to reach into one of the slither-beast holes all around, to drag out its occupant and hide yourself inside. You ignore this instinct and approach cautiously, taking care to keep Sollux behind you.  
“It’s a Golem.”  
“A what?”  
“A big grouper of rock and coral and seaweed that all comes together to fight for somefin.”  
Sollux hasn’t got the hang of your puns yet “You what?”  
Sighing, you use some simpler terms “It’s a big ugly rock-pile that beats stuff up for the person that magics it to life. This one is dead. Really dead.”  
The coral and rock has not only fallen apart, but shattered into dozens of pieces. The kelp is scattered about the place as well, suggesting that the Golem had fallen from a great height when it landed on the shelf.  
But what could have knocked it out of the water? What could have stunned the Golem so as to knock it right off its mount (the killer-beast is nowhere in sight either) and to have it fall to the ground without recovering itself and its powers to swim?  
Nothing, unless the Sea Witch has had to do something else with her power.   
“Oh…oh my Gog. Thank Gog.”  
You whirl around and grab Sollux by the arms, swinging him around.  
“They’re dead!”  
“They’re dead?” he repeats, his eyes wide and slightly fearful.  
“They’re dead! The Golems are dead, so the spell has been broken, so she’s having to use her powers for something else! She had to krill them all to fight somefin else, Sollux! This is great news!”  
“It is?” he cocks an eyebrow “Doesn’t that mean she’s gonna be fighting something else?”  
The colour drains from your face. You had forgotten about that small, inconvenient and critical truth.  
“Oh, shit! Oh, shit! We gotta get there! We gotta go help them!”  
With Sollux in tow, you tear off across the seascape that is now littered with the remains of fallen, dead Golems.

John Egbert: what will you do? =============>

Your name is John Egbert, and the first thing to do is probably to restrain your emotions. Yourself in general.  
Well, can you be blamed for kind of losing your shit? You’re already lost your moirail, and now this? And to the same fucking bastard of a mer?  
She’s not even a mer. She’s not even a thing with a soul, not like a human, or a mer, or a song-beast or a chatter-beast or anything like that. She’s not even one of those cold, tooth-beasts that starts out life, before life has even begun outside the egg, by eating their twin.  
She’s something sent by the gods to be evil. Plain and simple, just to be evil.  
And she killed Jake.  
She would have killed you too, except Dave has grabbed you by the arms and twisted them behind your back and he’s got you pressed to the floor. In your ear, he whispers comforts that mean little and apologies for things he hasn’t even done.  
You want to tell him to shut up, but you know if you speak, you’ll just scream. And scream. And scream, until your throat collapses. Either from the effort, or on the end of one of the prongs of the Sea Witch’s trident.   
At this point, you’re not really sure what happened. One moment, Jake was fine. The next, you think he must have imagined some opening with which to attack the Sea Witch. So the plan went out the window, as did his chances for survival, and he just charged into certain death.  
Now that you think about it, you’re mad at Jake.  
Why would he do that when he knew he had no chance?  
Was that a suicide? If so, why would he commit suicide and leave you behind? No, no, that doesn’t make sense at all.   
He just died.  
“Dave,” you rasp “I’m ok. I’m not gonna go for her.”  
“Yeah, well you’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.” but he allows you to get up anyway “You gonna be able to swim with me?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Yeah?”  
“I said yes already.”  
“So you did.”  
He picks the direction.  
The Sea Witch is visible through the numerous cracks in the buildings. Her back is turned to you, however, so all that there is to stare at in horror is a lot of hair. Her face may be transcendently ugly, but her hair is really quite fantastic.  
The streets have been so mauled it is difficult to see where you’re going, but Dave seems to have a clear destination in mind.  
Where his house was, in fact. Not that far away from the royal living quarters, where you were practically raised as well. With your father dying in the way he did (a death that must have been nearly identical to Jake’s, now that you think about it), the Condesce must have felt indebted to your family.  
He set up the lie about your father being killed in a hunting accident to protect you, and then sort of sucked you into the royal family life. Bro is kind of your third father, after Jake being your second. Now, he’s your only father figure, and you have no idea where he’s gone anyway.  
This is just not your day, is it?  
“Whoa!” Dave stops suddenly.  
You try to look around his shoulder to see the problem, but he pushes you back too quickly for you to see much more than a rapidly growing puddle of red on the floor.  
It turns out to be the shadow of an approaching fireball.  
You and Dave haven’t gotten very far when the fireball impacts. It blow the building apart.  
You are struck in the shoulder, hip, back and both arms in rapid succession. The world blacks out for a few seconds, and you are left spinning in an empty space, wondering if you are dead.  
Takes you a few moments to figure out that you are in fact, not dead. Just dazed. Bleeding from so many cuts you can’t begin to count them. Bruised and beaten to a pulp, but not incapable of movement.  
“Dave?”  
“I’m over here!” his voice is hoarse “John, get this fucking thing off me!”  
It takes you a moment to locate Dave.  
He’s pinned under a section of stone wall that has cracked in two places. Neither of those cracks are anywhere near him, however, and the fin of his tail is pinned under the corner of the wall. The pain must be incredible; that weight will have flattened his tail completely.  
“Um, oh, shit. Hold on, I’ll get you out of this.”  
Shrugging fragments of stone from your shoulders and hair, you cross the destroyed floor to Dave. You bend down to examine the stone that has him pinned. He has not been lucky. As far as you can tell, the tail-fin has been completely flattened. He won’t be able to use it for all of the bruises that will begin to form, nearly the moment you get this off of him.  
Straightening, you lay a hand on Dave’s shoulder “Looks bad.”  
“How bad?” he speaks with difficulty, as if there is something lodged in his throat “How bad is bad?”  
“I don’t think you’re gonna be able to swim.”  
He closes his eyes for a few seconds. His breathing becomes shuddery and irregular, and his hands clench to fists.  
But when he opens his eyes, they are as clear as clean water in sunny shallows “I think you’re gonna have to leave me then.”  
You scoff “Fat fucking chance. Listen, this stone is cracked in a few places. I’m just gonna widen those until the stone cracks on top of you, and then I’ll pull you out and-”  
“What, you’ll carry me out?” he laughs without humour “No you won’t. Look, we haven’t got a roof. How long before she sees us?”  
“Not long at all,” drawls a voice overhead.  
A shadow falls over you. This time, a black shadow, not an orange one. The Sea Witch hangs over you.  
“Not long at all.” she concludes and raises her trident.

Dirk Strider: fuck this ==========>

Your name is Dirk Strider and the Sea Witch doesn’t see you coming.  
So focused on her quarry is she that she doesn’t even hear the bellow of rage and possibly fear coming up behind her until it is far too late. Rather than smashing dead into her back, you stop just short of crashing into her and reach around her neck with both arms. You grab the shaft of the trident on either side of her neck and pull it to you with all your strength.  
Your chest is pressed to the back of her neck, and you can feel the trident straining against the flesh of her thick throat trying to pass through.  
There is little hope of you beating her in a contest of strength when she starts to push back against the trident, so before she can begin to get a grip on the trident, you pull her back as far as you can.  
“John! Run! Leave Dave!”  
John isn’t having any of that. Out of the corner of your eye, you see he has put himself between Dave and you and the Witch. As if his little body is going to block the Sea Witch’s attacks, when they come again.  
It sends a surge of strength through you. A fierce, almost primal determination to get both of those boys out of there whatever it takes.  
At once, you fling the trident away from you. While the Witch reaches out to catch it, you jam your fingers into her gills. The flesh around her gills is a lot tougher than you thought it would be, but you are not deterred. You dig in, further, further, further until finally you feel the moist rasp of internal tissues bloodying on the tips of your fingers.  
The hoarse snarl she lets out is almost enough to get you to let go.  
Instead, you convince yourself to do the opposite you dig in even harder and snarl back. Any moment she’s going to reach back and pluck you off, or flick you away with the trident, so you’ve got to do as much damage as possible while you can.  
You have barely finished this thought before she has raised the trident over her head, with it pivoted backwards so as to rake you right off her back.  
With one last twist of your fingers and scrape of your fingernails, you pull out of her gills. At the last second, you clench your hands into fists and come away with glistening, slippery strips of the tissue in either hand.  
Now open and weeping, her gills flap raggedly in the sea-breeze. She gurgles something deroguatory about your mother and, without missing a beat, seemingly without feeling her injury at all, plunges the trident down.   
Just as you dodge out the way, Porrim appears from literally nowhere and gets in the way. She grasps the shaft of the trident and pulls with all her might. Catching onto her intention, you grab the handle a little above her and pull down too.  
The Sea Witch does not expect this. The trident slips from her hands like a greased fish.  
You let Porrim have it and high-tail it back to your brother and John, who is still doing his best to get Dave out from under the stones.  
“Dirk!” shouts Porrim “Get away from here, as fast as you can!”  
The Sea Witch stops. Her opened gills weep. You’ve never seen a living face pull the expression she has on right now; it looks like the rot-slackened grimaces the dead make as they’re sunk into the depths of the trenches.  
She looks between you, the kids, and the fleeing Porrim and the trident. Clearly, this is one of the most irritating decisions she has ever had to make.  
She chooses Porrim. You can feel nothing but relief as the Sea Witch rolls around with a colossal roar and charges after Porrim. You can’t watch either, but you hope to Gog that Porrim can swim fast enough to stay ahead, or at least to find somewhere to hide.  
“Dave, hold still. I’m gonna lift this off you.”  
Dave speaks through gritted teeth “It’s too heavy.”  
“No it’s not, Dave, it’s not,” you grip the edge of the stone wall with no expectation of being able to lift the thing.   
John gets on the other side and hooks his hands around the edge in the same way.  
Meanwhile, Dave looks fearfully over his shoulder. The Sea Witch’s howls of rage are plain to hear, and he is sure that she will come rushing back at any moment, her trident freshly stained with green blood, to finish the job off.  
“Alright, John, you ready? The second this thing is off of Dave I want you to help him, if he can’t get out on his own.”  
John shoots you a doubtful look, but squares his shoulders in preparation for lifting the big bastard chunk of stone.  
“Lift now.”  
Amazingly, the stone lifts. Actually, you did just rip the gills of the sea’s most feared tyrant open like prying a pearl-beast shell open, so no, this feat of strength is not actually that impressive.  
As soon as the weight is off of him, Dave scoots back on his elbows. Your pusher twists to see the angry, swollen look of his tail. You’ve never seen something that looked crushed flat and swollen at the same time. Blood leaks out from the bottom of his fluke. The seam of his flesh has actually burst open, and his blood pours as freely from the wound as if it were a bottle of spilled ink.  
Dave takes one look at his wound and collapses flat on his back.  
“That’s it. I’m dead.”  
“You’re not dead.” insists John “I know where we are, ok? We’re not far from the medical centre! We can just stitch your tail up and you’ll be swimming again in a few days!”  
Dave folds an elbow over his eyes “Oh yeah, and how the hell am I gonna outswim the Sea Witch?”  
“You’re not. You’re going to be good for John while I go finish pulling that bastard’s gills out.”  
You start after them before either of the boys can protest. 

Cronus Vantas: how are you doing?==========>

Your name is Cronus Vantas, and you’re doing alright, all things considered.  
You have no fucking idea where you are right now and your father seems angry with you, for reasons which are as mysterious to you as where in the city you might be right now.  
“Did you hear that?”  
He throws out an arm in front of you, which you swim straight into.  
“What? The roar of fire and death?”  
He gives you a sharp look “No, smart-fin! That sounded like the Sea Witch was wounded.”  
You scoff “What kind of magical beast would be able to wound her? Maybe she stubbed her fluke?”  
Your father cuffs you lightly “Will you please take this seriously?”  
“I can’t take this any seriouser!”  
“That ain’t a word! Gog, yer only aw-way fer fiv-ve years an’ you forget yer own language!”  
Where is this coming from? What does he possibly have to be so angry about?  
“Dad, what is going on with you?”  
He narrows his eyes, but the look in them is of sadness, rather than anger “What do you think?” he says softly “What do you think I’m mad about?”  
Then he turns his back to you and swims up without hesitation, out into the open.  
You feel you have no choice but to follow him and foil whatever plans he seems to have to kill himself.  
“Dad!” you call, your pusher (heart? You don’t know which one anymore) at being in the open “What’s going on? What the hell are you doing?”  
At that exact moment, a streak of green and gold narrowly misses barrelling straight into you. There’s a sound of fabric being ripped and a feeling in your side like the world’s most intense stitch. Gasping in pain and shock, you clap a hand to your side and find that a little cloud of blood billows up from spot. The wound.  
Your father was missed completely by the green. But he is almost hit by what charges after it; the Sea Witch, in a writhing fury, her face blanched with the effort of breathing. She must be out of breath, owing to having her gills torn right open. She passes your father without the slightest indication she knows he’s there.  
The pieces fit together; Porrim stole the trident, and the Sea Witch wants it back.  
Clearly, Porrim doesn’t know what she’s doing with that thing. Otherwise she wouldn’t have flayed your goddamned side open with the stupid prongs, right?  
Oh, yeah, shit that hurts.  
“Cronus! Get out of here!” barks your father.  
You look up and, too late, see the Sea Witch is coming back to get you.  
One moment, her face is a few hundred feet away. The next, she is right beside you. Rather than the fear making time move slowly, as you have been so frequently told will happen, time speeds up so much you’re not even sure if you have drawn a breath by the time she seizes your arm, wraps you up in her arms, and digs a single finger into the open wound in your side.  
Too shocked and pained to scream or struggle, you hang limply in her arms. The finger she has dug into your wound is topped by a viciously long fingernail that punctures even deeper. A jolt of incredible pain tells you she has just managed to poke something vital and probably irreplaceable.   
“No!”   
That’s your father’s voice. Your vision blurs. You can’t see a thing through these red bursts of light- are those your neurons firing your brain, your pan into overdrive? Letting your body know you’re about to die if you don’t get away.  
“Give me back my sticker and maybe he gets ta live. Fer a little whale longer.”  
“Let go of him.” growls your father.  
“Give me somefin else to hang onto, and maybe you get yer buoy back.”  
“I mean it, Nymph. Let him go.”  
A tremor seems to run through her body “What the fuck didja just call me?”  
“Nymph,” his voice sounds different- gentler, as if addressing a wounded animal (which she is) “Isn’t this enough? Look around you right now. Just look.”  
She doesn’t move.  
“Just look at everythin’ you did. More’n enough, in fact. Please just let it be. Just let it go quiet now.”  
The Sea Witch snorts through her nose “Guppy, you think that’s gonna work? You think you can barge in on my blood-lettin’ and get me ta stop with some pretty words and a soft voice? Fuck me, you must have been a terrible Condesce.”  
At this point, you have gathered yourself enough to be able to pick your father’s face out of your shivering fields of vision. You wish you hadn’t.  
His eyes are burning “Worth a shot.”  
Your father isn’t a magical mer. If he were, he would have already blown the Sea Witch’s head off without a fear of hitting yours by mistake. But he’s not, so he’s got to get creative.  
He improvises. This, he does by bringing a hand from behind his back that previously looked like it was propping him up as he laboured for his breath. In the hand is a small rock, approximately the size of your four fingers pressed together.  
Your father throws the stone with a deadly accuracy. A snatch of grey whizzes past your head and a second later, a fresh spurt of fuchsia blood colours the water.  
The Sea Witch cannot even manage a snarl as she releases you and scrabbles at the fragment of stone that has become embedded in the tissue of her gills. Your father passes in a flash, catching you on the way. His arm accidentally hits the wound as he catches you, causing you to add a good bit of your own blood to the cloud that is rapidly surrounding the Condesce.   
He grunts a wordless apology, collecting you up in his arms the way he used to hold you when you were a child.  
“Stay here. Let me do the fighting.”  
Where he has left you, you cannot say. All you know is that it is dark, cool and sheltered. No light falls on you.   
You close your eyes and there is no difference. You can’t move.

Dualscar Ampora: finish this ===========>

Your name is Dualscar Ampora, Cary to your friends, and Dad or Pa to your children, depending on how they feel about you at that moment.  
And, as the command thingie suggests, you are definitely going to finish this.  
Assuming you are still alive at the end of this fight, which you fully intend to be for as long as it takes to give Cronus and what’s-his-face your blessing and to tell Eridan he’s the Condesce now, you also intend to stick around to punch Terezi in the face for daring to drag your baby back down into this mess. He was on the land for a reason, for Gog’s sake.  
Your original plan was to stash him with Cronus and whoever that red guy is in their incredibly secret household on the beach until the trouble was over. You had hopes that at least one mer would get through the troubles to tell Eridan it was safe to come back to whatever kingdom remained to him. Your personal survival was never on the cards.  
Somehow you always understood that the next fight with the old Condesce would be one of the last things you would ever do in life.  
Porrim and the trident are nowhere in sight. The Sea Witch has not moved from where you left her, writhing and gurgling and grasping violently at the stone in her throat.  
When she hears you coming, she turns calmly. Rather than tearing the stone out, she has left it in her gills, knowing that the moment she removes it her gills will be flooded with blood and it will be impossible for her to breathe. That is what you must aim for; one quick, well-placed jab to the stone fragment and you will lodge it all the way in. Then, she will be incapacitated and maybe even easy to finish off.  
But before that…  
“I saw that you killed Meenah,” you say, your voice slow and calm. This situation would feel a whole lot safer if you had Bro here, but you’ve got no idea where he could have gotten to “I gotta ask, why did you do that? She helped you.”  
“Yeah, she helped me. An’ she was determined ta keep throwin’ that help my wave. You think I need that pan-ache all the time?” her words strain through what must be gallons of blood in her lungs. One hand is cupped over the stone, with the tip of it emerging between the fingers.  
“She nearly killed two people for you. Meenah is a lot of things, and until a little w-while ago, she wasn’t a murderer. Not really, not until she let you out…these two young people saw her on a dock while she was collectin’ the ingredients for yer spell. The one that would get you out and let you rain that burning stuff down on the land. Years ago now-w, and w-when she figured out that they’d seen her? She threw a fireball at them. One of ‘em is mute now and the other one can’t use their nose anymore. She became somethin’ tw-wisted out of her desperation to be loved by you.”  
The Sea Witch shakes her head “That shit don’t mean nofin to me an’ you know it. I’m out now, and there ain’t nofish I got to thank fer that but myself…but I gotta ask,” a wicked, pained grin curves her mouth “Why give her the key to my clammer if you knew she was already collectin’ the ingredients to dissolve my cage completely?”  
She might as well hear the truth. There is little reason to guard it now “She needed to know she w-was still wanted and trusted at home, even after Cronus left. When he left her to go to that…that human, that little Lezlee, he left her high and dry. She had nofin- nothing! Nothing to connect her to the royals without first connectin’ herself to you, and your disgustin’ legacy. So I gave her the key. It was just fer us two to know, ya know? But it was supposed to make her stop. When I gav-ve her the key, I gav-ve her the first step at unlockin’ you. And I thought she’d stop once she figured out how much I wanted to trust her.”  
“But she didn’t.” finishes the Sea Witch, with difficulty “’cos that fry was my spawn, not yours. No matter how hard you tried to make her one ‘a the clamily.”  
“I understand that now. So, shall we?”  
“What?”  
“Fight to the death. I’m gettin’ tired of you. I forgot how fuckin’ ugly you are up this close.”  
She grins “G’head, guppy. I’m w-wide open.”  
“Damn straight you are.”   
The voice comes from behind her. As she hears the words, she whirls around to confront the speaker. Far too late.   
Broderick has already driven his fist straight into the rock shard embedded in her gills.  
The Sea Witch’s mouth fills with blood. She lets out a nearly inaudible gasp. In one swift, totally unexpected lunge, she catches Broderick around the throat and makes to snap his neck. You leap for her and punch the bleeding hole where the shard has disappeared. You can think of nothing to do other than burying your fingernails up to the very tips of your fingers in her flesh and tear.  
But she won’t let go of Bro.  
“Let go of him!” you command, for the second time today “Or I’ll tear your gills out!”  
Her head tilts back. Hair wafts into your face, brushing your cheeks as gently as kelp swaying in a sea breeze. Her grin is blood-stained.  
The Sea Witch knows she’s dead. She knows she has been disarmed and outnumbered. All she can do now is claim her revenge by claiming at least one of her killers.  
“No!” you wrench your hands from either side of her neck. They come away trailing ribbons of delicate, papery flesh. You fling the flesh away and go in for another two handfuls.  
Bro has dug his nails into the hands around his throat fruitlessly. Even with his throat being pressed as flat as a sheet of slate, he manages: “Get the kids out of -”  
The rest of what he has to say is cut off by a sickening snap. Followed immediately by the wet, crunching sound of a head being torn clean from its neck. The Sea Witch catches a wisp of blond hair and holds her prize over her head, contemplating it with a peaceful kind of triumph.  
“Whoops.” she gargles “Broke him.”  
Somewhere to the left, there is a wordless, agonised scream. This is immediately followed by a shout of: “DIRK, NO!” and someone crashing into someone else, presumably to pin them down.  
“Are you done?”   
The Sea Witch lets the hair slip through her fingers, and her prize drifts upwards, towards the surface “I’m done.”  
You snap her neck in the same way she snapped Bro’s.


	41. The end, and all that jazz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, folks.

Porrim Maryam: get rid of this thing =========>

Your name is Porrim Maryam, and this trip should normally be a three-day swim.  
You, however, are a Maryam, so certain laws of physics and time don’t really apply to you in the conventional sense. The distance melts underneath your tail, which screams with the aches and muscle cramps by the time you reach where your destination.  
The door is shut tightly.  
Briefly, you consider turning your back on her just as she turned her back on the rest of her people. She would have known the moment the Condesce clawed her way out of that cage with the help of her traitorous daughter. She could have done something to stop it, or to save the people who were killed in their scores.  
Instead, she sat in here.  
If you get your way, she won’t be able to forget her inactivity for even one day as long as she lives in this little cave of hers.  
Rapping smartly on the door, you let the trident dangle loosely from one hand. The weapon is heavy to be sure, but your arms have not yet begun to burn with the effort of carrying it three days’ distance in under an hour.  
Another one of those semi-magic Maryam things.  
Finally, a muffled reply comes from the other side of the door “Fuck off, Ampora.”  
“It’s me, Momma. It’s Porrim.”  
A pause. Then, a hair-raising grinding as she pulls back the door and your mother’s age-wizened face peers suspiciously at you.  
Her eyes grow wide with shock when she sees what you’re holding “Where in the hell did you get that?”  
“Stole it from the Sea Witch.” you say, shrugging “The Condesce probably killed her, otherwise she would have caught up to me by now.”  
“What are you thinking, little girl? Getting involved with those people?”  
You thrust the trident at her so she has to grab the handle to prevent it from bumping her chest.  
“What do you mean what was I thinking?” you repeat bitterly “I was thinking about the survival of our people.”  
“You,” says her mother stiffly “Are not one of our people anymore, are you? Not since you took up with that smoking, land-pounding fiend.”  
“Momma, that’s my partner you’re talking about. I’ll thank you to be polite about Damara.”  
She frowns, but it is not a malicious expression “Why don’t you come in? I’m sure we have a lot to talk about?”  
“Not that much, actually.”  
Her face falls and quickly folds into another scowl “Oh, really? Well tell me, how is Lezlee? You must have seen him.”  
“He’s fine.”  
“That’s all you’re going to tell me?”  
“If you want an essay, you should ask him yourself. He only just figured out what our family is, Momma, and you should be the one to explain things to him. The boys need to know as well,” it occurs to you that you could be very cruel by letting her know that her refusal to get off her tailfin almost cost her a grandson.  
Given all the things that have happened today that she could have prevented, probably by just being there and being the Momma Maryam? Well, why the fuck not?”  
“Kankri was dragged into it all, you know. The Sea Witch scooped him off the shore, or maybe Meenah did it for her, to get Cronus into the water. To kill off the whole royal family.”  
To your immense satisfaction, she nearly drops the trident “Kankri was down here?”  
“In the thick of it. He got slashed open too.”  
“You mean to tell me you let your nephew-”  
“Don’t you dare try to blame this on me!” you snap “It wasn’t my fault! He was gone by the time Damara and I got to the coast, ok? There was nothing I could do for him but get back in the water, and I did that.”  
Without hesitation.  
What is wrong with your mother? Has she really spent so much time in this damned cave that her brain has gone stale, and she can’t remember what is important anymore? And why is she so eager to accuse you of neglecting your duties, when it was her who hid herself in this cave for the duration of the fight?  
Looking for another to shoulder the blame, you suppose.  
Suddenly, you’re very tired. You can’t look at her anymore and you just want to go home and see your partner.  
“I’m gonna go now.”  
She frowns “You swam all this way. You may as well come in and rest.”  
“I can’t. I got to get home.”  
“Back to the land, you mean.”  
“That’s what I said. Back home.”  
Your mother thinks for a moment, but cannot come up with a point of protest strong enough to keep you from going.  
“I expect you want me to hold onto this?” she gestures to the trident.  
You nod “Her magic was nowhere near as strong as it used to be without that bastard to channel it. Just hide it for me, ok? For everyone, in fact. It would be better if no one ever discovers where this thing went.”  
Your mother takes a suspicious sniff of the water “There’s so much blood in the water, I sincerely doubt there is anyone left alive who would know to come looking for this.”  
“Thanks. Goodbye Momma.”  
Before you can go, your mother cups the side of your face and turns you, inspecting the bruises on your face. Then she waves you away. The door to her cave closes in your face.

 

Feferi Pexies: save the day =========>

Your name is Feferi Pexies, and something tells you the day has already been won.  
At the base of the only tower that remains standing in the city, your friends are grouped. Also, the sole surviving members of your city. There aren’t many of them. A lot less than you had hoped for, but many more than you expected.  
You were thinking that maybe one person would survive out of all of them? And your fingers were crossed for that mer to be Eridan. Now, you feel unspeakably guilty to have wished for this at all. The first thing you do is throw your arms around the first person you reach.  
John hugs you back, which is strange. You and John know each other, sure, but you would never have picked him as the first person you would wrap up in a hug when you realised a battle to the death had ended in a victory. Then again, how many times have you given thought to that particular scenario anyway?  
“Are you ok?” you ask “You’re not hurt or anything?”  
He shrugs “Not me. Not really.”  
“Did anyone…”  
“Die? Yeah. Jake. Bro. The Sea Witch.”  
You don’t catch the last part at first, so distracted are you by the first two names.  
That can’t be, can it?  
Especially not Bro! That mer was a pillar of strength- there’s no way he could die. Besides, he’s Dualscar’s moirail, and Dualscar would never allow him to be hurt.  
Shaking your head, you separate from John “What are you talking about?”  
His face is not grim- nothing so common or easy to feel as being grim. Instead, his face reminds you of the way Dualscar looked shortly after Cronus died- a death that you now understand was faked. As if the troubles of the world had all come to roost on his shoulders at once, and their weight was so crushing he could hardly keep himself upright.  
He turns from you and goes back to Dave, who is stretched out on a length of coral, prone and weak. His tail has been crushed- you can tell this from just one look- and the seam of his fluke has only recently been stitched back together by black kelp thread. The sight of it makes your acid-bag flip.  
You swallow hard, willing yourself not to vomit on Dave “That looks like it hurts.”  
“Feferi!” he cries, making the others turn and realise you are there “How did you get here?”  
You shrug, embarrassed “Uh, I just swam. I’m sorry I got here so late.”  
“Fuck that! I thought you were dead! C’mere, give me a hug- watch the tail, watch the tail, I’m a broken man.”   
You’ve barely finished hugging Dave (careful to avoid jostling his wounded fluke) when Eridan flings himself into your arms.  
The next few moments are a blur of his purple skin and black hair and his massive, toothy grin. It takes all the willpower you’ve got not to pile him right in front of all your friends. Good thing for you, self-control is one thing you have an abundance of. That’s probably why you and Eridan are moirails- he needs someone to balance out his lack of impulse control.  
“Are you alright?” you demand, when there’s enough of his hair out of your mouth to enable speech “Oh my Gog, I’m so sorry! I meant to get here so much faster! I wanted to help you fight, and whale we were getting closer, I saw all this Golems that got krilled and crushed ‘cos the Sea Witch had to use up all of her power to fight this shoal, and I thought you were all going to be dead, but you’re not!”  
When you pause for breath, he takes over, gushing almost as fast as you did “Oh, it was so fuckin’ scary, Fef! She was throw-win’ flames ev-verywhere an’ tryin’ ta kill us all an’ I thought fer sure we were gonna die, but Dirk was amazin’ and he literally fuckin’ ripped her gills out! It was so w-weird, right, ‘cos he just charges up an’ tears her gills right out, like, boom! I didn’t even know-w ya could do that to a person!”  
Your own gills twinge sympathetically, but really, you cannot bring yourself to feel anything but satisfaction to hear that your mother suffered before she died.  
She definitely earned as much pain as could be inflicted on her.  
The survivors consist of these people: John, Dave, Dirk, Eridan, Cronus, some guy you don’t know who appears to be attending to a massive wound in his side, and Dualscar. Actually they have to tell you that Dualscar’s alive, because you don’t see him with the assembled. He has gone off to bury the body of Bro, who, you suppose, is actually dead.  
Porrim is presumably alive, but no one can quite figure out where she has gone with the trident she literally ripped from the Condesce’s hands- but Cronus guesses she went to hide it where her mother used to live.  
Everyone knows Maryam is dead, and this battle seems to have only confirmed what some mers desperately wanted to believe was a rumour. If Maryam was still alive she would have shown up to fight for her people, just like the old days. She is a hero, after all, and she would not have let her people down.  
Before you can think the better of it, you blurt “Where’s Terezi? She- she took Eridan, right?”  
Dave lies back with a groan and folds his elbow over his eyes. Dirk lays a hand on his forehead and mutters something comforting.  
“We don’t know.” says John flatly “We’re about to go looking.”  
You spring up “Let me help!”  
But John is no longer looking at you. Instead, he is looking at someone you had completely forgotten was there.  
Sollux has hung back so far to give you guys some space, you, in particular, to figure out who is alive and who you will have to mourn.  
“Who’s that?” asks John.  
“Who’s what?” Dave sits up quickly, thinking someone has seen Terezi.  
“Hi,” says Sollux awkwardly “Uh, I’m -”  
“Sollux!” shrieks Eridan in disbelief “W-what the w-what? How did you- you got a bloody tail! Two of them! You’re a mer! W-what, really? All this time?”  
“No! No, uh, Cronus! That stuff you had to turn you into a human? Well it works reverse for humans, so now I’m a mer, I guess.”  
Cronus’s eyes are shining through the glaze of pain, and he grins “You went digging through the bubble in my closet?”  
Sollux’s newly flaxen skin turns gold in embarrassment “I had to help out. Even if it was just by swimming with Feferi. She’s really hurt, you know.”  
None of you had noticed until now, but you are actually still bleeding. Not heavily- just enough to get a swooping feeling of lethargy and nausea the moment you look down to inspect the damage.  
“Oh, Gog,” you gasp, grabbing Eridan’s shoulder for support “Yeah, I am. Um, can somefish help me out here?”  
“I got it.” says Dirk quietly “Come here, Fef.”  
He scoops you up as easily as if you were made of bubbles and carries you off into the ruins. You cast a glance over your shoulder and see Eridan and Sollux, their postures awkwardly stiff and formal, talking through the corners of their mouths.  
Adorable.  
You hope Sollux stays underwater.

Cronus Vantas: go check on your dad =========>

Your name is Cronus, and now that your moirail has gone and made himself useful, you’re getting the feeling you should too.  
In the last few minutes of the battle you turned out to be absolutely fucking useless. As well as the fact that you didn’t really put up a fight against the Condesce. Basically, all you did was come down here and get in the way.  
So, really, you should be pulling your weight right now.  
“Kankri.”  
He removes his hand from the wound, thinking he has hurt you.  
“No, it’s alright. I’m ok. I just think we should find my dad.”  
Kankri shakes his head impatiently “Hold on, Cronus. I’m almost done with this.”  
For someone who has never had to bandage anything worse than a scraped knee, he is sure doing a wonderful job of wrapping up your open side. He has swathed the wounds in lengths of kelp, on Dirk’s instructions, and is just about to tie off the bandage wrap.  
You are happy to let him finish. There’s something else interesting to focus on anyway- Eridan and Sollux have just had their little reunion, and are now ploughing through what might be the cutest and most awkward conversation you have ever born witness to.  
It is quite obvious to you and presumably everyone else that those two really want to fall into each other’s arms. However, it is debatable, as to whether or not Eridan realises that Sollux wants to wrap him up in a tight hug, and you think Sollux must be wary of man-handling Eridan, considering what he has just been through.  
Cute.  
You kind of hope Sollux will stay underwater. God knows, his life on land is not much to look forward to. And he looks fantastic as a mer- a double tail as well, which is so rare you don’t know if you have ever seen one in person before. Somehow, he made the gruelling swim to the city as well, with the intention to just dive into the thick of the battle and see who and how he could help?  
Eridan had better make a matesprite of that kid.  
“All done.” says Kankri “I cannot promise it will hold, as I am not really experienced with this sort of thing-”  
You turn his head from your wound and kiss him.   
“It looks great, babe. You did a good job.”  
He wipes his mouth “Thank you. Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to look for him instead?”  
“We can go together. You can carry me if I get, you know-w, all fainty and stuff.”  
Going by the grim look on his face, Kankri is not happy with this arrangement. He wants you to prostrate yourself on the ground like Dave has had to, but he offers no protest. Winding an arm carefully around your shoulders, he helps you upright.  
“Eridan, stay right here.”  
He looks up, abashed, as if he has been caught doing something terribly embarrassing “W-where you goin’?”  
“Just gonna check on Pa.”  
“Why, w-was he hurt?”  
“No. He might just need some company, is all.”  
Eridan nods and returns to Sollux. Whatever they are talking about must have become even more cringe-worthy than it already was; both of them are blushing so badly, their faces seem to be covered in blood.  
Adorable.   
You see your father in the near-distance. Still, it will be something of a trek, with the way your side feels right now.   
Kankri bears your weight without complaint, though it can’t be easy. He has said very little since the Sea Witch was killed. His account of where he was when the big bitch finally bit the dust is essentially identical to yours; hiding, under the protection of a bigger, badass mer who had to dart away at the last moment to defeat her.  
He, however, was not picked up again by his protector mer. You had to scour the ruins calling for him for a good ten minutes before he finally heard you. The entire time, you were almost certain you had been made a widower.  
You ended up nearly making a widower of him by running around looking for him, with a giant wound in your side the entire time. You passed out the second you saw him, and had to be carried back by Dirk, who started the bandaging process.   
Dirk, too, hasn’t said much since the battle ended. Jake’s body is, mercifully, well on its way to the surface so none of you have to look at the mangled thing the Sea Witch made of him.  
“What are you going to do with the Sea Witch’s body?” asks Kankri as you near the place where she lies, not too far from Bro’s corpse.  
“There’s two ways you can go when yer a mer. Either up, or down. Down is the best. There, ya can be sure of being eaten by all the stuff at the bottom an’ makin’ sure the energy you used while you were alive is paid back to the sea. Up is when people don’t get a chance to be buried, which is still alright, because something will eat you on your way up there. We float, see? I don’t get w-why we float when ev-verything else sinks to make marine snow, but that’s just the w-way it goes.”  
Kankri nods “That’s quite interesting. How come bodies are never discovered, then, by fishermen and the like?”  
“I’m sure they are. The government or somebody just swoops in to make sure the evidence is all gone and hidden up. Can’t have the world knowing about mers, can w-we?”  
“So you plan to sink the Sea Witch’s body?”  
“Nah, babe. W-we’re gonna pin her. When somebody’s done the kinda stuff she did…well, we don’t want that kind of energy gettin’ into the system. We just want it rotted and gone.”  
Kankri nods “That’s…that’s also interesting.”  
When you arrive, you see that your father is already in the process of pinning the Sea Witch’s body.  
Her head has been weighted with stones, holding her by the hair to the ground, so that the head floats just above the rest of the body like a demented balloon.  
In the customary way, your father has placed a heavy stone on her chest, buried each of her arms up to the wrist and her tail up to her midsection. Her head would also be buried, but he has yet to finish patting the rocks into place around her tail. In a moment, he will dig a small hole above the neck and bury the head there. Otherwise, her head is likely to detach from the body and rise to the surface, as the world’s most gruesome bubble. No creature you can think of would dare to eat that morsel, no matter if they were on the brink of starvation.  
“Pa.”  
He looks up from his work “Hey, boy. How’s the wound?”  
“Eh. Flesh wound.”  
Kankri rolls his eyes.  
“Uh, Pa? Terezi is still missing.”  
Your father’s face is impossible to read “She was with Jake, wasn’t she?”  
“Yeah…yeah she was.” you don’t like the look on his face “We should still look.”  
“I’m not sure it’s worth the effort Cronus. If Dav-ve could sw-wim, then I would let him run around all over the city’s ruins. But frankly, we got no idea where ta start lookin’ for her, an’ I already got one too many bodies to bury today.”  
He gestures vaguely over his shoulder.  
Behind him, a cloth-wrapped corpse lies. The cloth has been pinned down at the edges to prevent the body inside from floating away.   
Bro was a good mer. A good father, and a good moirail.  
Naturally, he’s going to have to be sunk later on.  
“Pa?”  
“Yeah, Cronus?”  
“I think Kankri and I should go home.”  
His eyes meet yours. Still, there is nothing to read in there “I think you should too, boy.”

 

(Two years later)

“I’m gonna cry.”  
“Please,” says Karkat, around his curled lip “Refrain from crying.”  
Your name is Cronus Vantas, and there is no way to stop the tears from coming “No. No I will not. I’m gonna start howlin’ an’ there ain’t a thin’ you can do to stop me.”  
True to your word, you do start sobbing. These are neat sobs, however, not the great gasping howls that Lezlee is prone to these days. Every time he sees Karkat’s high-school diploma, for example, he cannot contain himself and will burst into either silent fits or little dry sobs as he tries to mentally prepare himself for sending his second and youngest baby off to college.  
Karkat has tried on many occasions to soothe his father- he’s going with Gamzee, after all, and they’re going to be roommates, and Equius will probably end up being next door, so what the fuck are you worried about, Dad? We’ll all look out for each other.  
Still, he cannot be persuaded to stop crying. Fortunately, he is not alone.  
As aforementioned, you have joined him, and so have Hana, Rus and Damara. You didn’t actually know Rus had tear ducts, but he keeps having to wipe his eyes every time he loads another box of Equius’s into the back of the van.  
Damara isn’t crying so much as laughing with tears. She lists a long, detailed catalogue of the troubles Aradia is going to face in the near-future, such as bills and having to do her own laundry, and is convinced that Aradia will come crawling home soon.  
Hana is just lying on her face, stretched across the two front seats and crying.   
You don’t have as much of a right to cry as you are, right now. True, Karkat has lived here for two years and essentially been the pseudo son that replaced your former pseudo son, who’s basically a brother-in-law now by human terms, and, true, Karkat has spent at least one night under your roof per week since the world nearly ended at the hands of the Sea Witch, but he’s not your baby.  
He is Lezlee’s baby. Lezlee’s to make a fuss over.  
Lezlee has used up his tears by now. His eyes have been red and swollen over the grin he wears, as a vain attempt to convince Karkat he’s actually excited for his son. On some level, he probably is. But on all the other levels, he’s just a single father, facing an empty nest, and doing his best not to grab his son by the ankles and beg him to live in his basement bedroom for a few more years.  
If he asked, Karkat might even agree. He does love that basement bedroom- far more spacious and cool in the summer than his last was, so he tells you.  
It was pretty easy for the other two Vantases to move back to town after things had settled down. The rain had left an awful lot of houses empty, so there were plenty places to move in.  
“Cronus!” calls Gamzee “Help a brother out?”  
Wiping your eyes on your sleeve, you hurry over to Gamzee, who is attempting the impossible task of getting his armchair fit into the backseat on his own. Graa’ant is nowhere to be seen, having excused himself to the bathroom (to weep like an infant in privacy), so Gamzee has to load his stuff in on his own. Kurloz couldn’t get away from work, or something like that.  
Seeing the two of you struggle, Nepeta bounds over and heaves the chair in, in one swift movement.  
“Jesus, Nepeta!” you gasp, catching yourself on the trunk door “You’re getting to be a strong as Equius.”  
Nepeta leans forward and whispers “Stronger, actually. But don’t tell him. He’s sensitive about it.”  
“I am not.” says Equius, loading a handful of paperbacks into the backseat.  
“Yes you are.” says Nepeta cheerfully “But I won’t hold it against you.”  
You figure if colleges allowed male and female students to room together, those two would be sharing a room and getting on like a house on fire. They are the closest you have ever seen to a human moiraillegance.  
Thinking of moiraillegances…  
“Kankri!”   
Your husband ducks out of his family’s car “Yes?”  
“I’m going to the beach, ok? I’ll be back soon.”  
“Could you take the dog with you? I wouldn’t ask, only she’s gone completely frantic over Karkat. I think Girl knows he might be going to college.”  
Karkat scoffs “With Dad carrying on like that, who doesn’t know I’m leaving?”  
Hunched in the front seat, Lezlee wipes his eyes for the fifteenth time in as many minute and accepts a proffered box of tissues from Lee, muttering a thank you under his breath.  
“Wait a sec’, Cronus, I thought we were all going down together, later on.” protests Nepeta “I don’t think they’re gonna be there yet, are they?”  
You shrug “I think they will be. I just want to talk to Eridan a little bit, an’ I don’t want to be distractin’ him from his friends ‘fore they all go off into the w-world.”  
Equius lays a comforting hand on her shoulder “You know Eridan and Sollux are early for everything. They’ll be there. Feferi too, and maybe the other two as well.”  
Nepeta lets you go without another word.  
The cars are all assembled in a kind of fleet outside of Gamzee’s house. It is early in the morning, and in a few hours, this whole group of cars will be hitting the road to ferry the last of the children to college enmasse.  
Everyone is going, including you and Kankri, although you will have to travel in separate cars so the books Karkat insisted on bringing will all fit.  
Kankri will be driving, in case his father accidentally swerves off-road because he can’t see through his tears. Lezlee has shotgun, and Karkat has the backseat all to himself and Girl, who wouldn’t tolerate being left home alone while every single one of her humans went off to have fun.  
You will be driving with Graa’ant and Gamzee, since they have the space.  
It will be good to see a little of your own family before you impose on someone else’s for a few hours.  
The trip to the beach is quick.   
Until a few months ago, you would have had to sneak onto the beach and dodge the patrols of mysterious people in black, who claimed to be patrolling the beach for the security of the town. Like, the giant float of strange, rainbow-bleeding fish-people weren’t their priorities at all.  
Well, the activity of these strange fish-people decreased into nothing once the bodies were discovered and swept up off the beach. Mainly because there were really no more mers to cause disturbances. Now, the beach is totally free of the mysterious people in black, save the odd one walking along the pier every now and then.  
There is no danger of you being caught with the mers on the beach. Anyone who comes along upon you, you can pass yourself off as someone combing the beach- yes, possibly for artefacts from the deceased mers that washed up here two years ago. The same with the small meeting you plan to have later in the morning, to act as a last goodbye to the goodbye you had at the bonfire last night.  
You and Kankri mainly went to supervise and make sure that none of the kids got too drunk, and stuck to the shadows while they threw sticks on their bonfire on the rocks and splashed their feet in the sea, around the kids.  
Just when you are about to reach the dunes, someone calls your name.  
You stop and wait patiently with your hands in your pockets until Porrim catches up.  
She scrapes her hair behind her ear and stoops to catch her breath “Hey, mind if I come along?”  
“No.” you lie, because you really kinda just want to talk to your brother alone for a few minutes? Maybe you can foist her off on Sollux.  
Porrim loops an arm through yours. Since the battle, for some reason, she has been a lot more willing to allow people to enter her personal space. Some deep personal burden seems to have flown out of her chest, or something like that?  
You don’t know. You don’t really mind either, as it has let her become your best friend on land.  
Dirk is still the love of your life. In water or on land.  
Porrim seems to read your mind: “So are you going to be able to see Dirk this week?”  
“Nah. I saw him the other day, before the kids came.”  
“He still lives close, then?”  
Porrim and Damara are still in the process of moving into town, so they aren’t quite acquainted with the little nuances in the comings and goings of the mer kids.   
“Close enough. They’re gonna have to move soon, though. When the mystery men were still in the area they musta nearly caught them about fifteen times. What if those people come back?”  
“Well if they don’t then they will have run off for no reason.”  
You shrug “I don’t know, P. We’ll figure it out later.”  
But you already know what will happen.  
The kids need lives, and so does Dirk. Dirk needs another city to disappear into, to find other red interests to take his mind off the one that drifted towards the sun. Dave needs to find other pale interests, to take his mind off the one that could still be alive somewhere, or, far more probably, buried dead beneath the rubble of the city with the Sea Witch.  
John, too, needs to work towards letting go of Vriska.  
They all need lives and there is no way they’re going to get anything close to a fulfilling, challenging life when all they do is languish on this stretch of coast.   
“Cronus!”  
A purple-grey shape slips from the water and heaves itself onto a rock that juts out into the sea. Shortly after it comes a yellow shape, which has to flop about a bit more to get where he wants to be.  
After two years underwater, Sollux doesn’t quite yet have the elegance of a mer. In fact, the way he moves reminds you of a pregnant seal. Eridan won’t tolerate comments of this sort made around his matesprit and will punish you with splashes if you allude towards Sollux’s less than graceful approach to the water.  
They really are a cute couple. And they really do deserve to get away from this place, to go be that cute couple somewhere that will properly appreciate them.  
“Hey, Eridan.” you throw your arms around him and squeeze, ignoring the chill of his blood and the dampness of his skin “How’s things? How’s Pa?”  
“He brought home a whole friggin’ whale yesterday- that’s the word, right? For those big plankton scoopers?” he looks hopefully at Sollux.  
Sollux smiles indulgently, and says to you “I’ve been teaching Eridan some English words. Just ‘cos my English gets mixed in with my…my whatever it is that mers speak, and I want him to be able to understand that as well, I guess.”  
You nod “Cool, cool. Sounds like you guys are doing ok down there.”  
“Yeah. We’re doing ok.”  
“Are Dave and John here yet?” Porrim cranes her neck, scanning the surf for glints of red or blue.  
“They’re comin’ later,” promises Eridan “They got some stuff to do.”  
“Sex.”  
Eridan smacks him on the shoulder “Sol!”  
“What? It’s true!”  
“It is not!”  
“Oh, come on like they haven’t gone that far already?”  
“Not” he growls “In front of Cro and Porrim, please.”  
Sol doesn’t blush the way he would have when he was younger. Apparently, when one has the kind of relationship with their father that Sol had, moving off the landmass that you used to share with said father will do wonders for your confidence.   
Psiimon hasn’t contacted Sollux once since he plunged into the sea- this is primarily because they don’t have Ouija boards underwater, but Sollux doesn’t need to know that.   
You and Kankri first made this promise between yourselves, after swimming back to the town to find Psiimon’s body swaying gently from a rope underneath the socks.  
His body was buried quickly, quietly, and so was his suicide altogether. As far as the rest of the kids know, Psiimon is still alive, and he just ran off on Sollux once he realised the burden of responsibility was gone.  
Keeping this secret is the last way you can protect Sol, now that you’re living in different worlds, and in a way, it protects Eridan too. You’re doing your best for these two. You’ll keep doing that meagre best until the day when they finally decide to go to another city to try their luck there, which is a day you know to be fast-approaching.  
With a playful smile, Eridan tugs on your calf “How about gettin’ in? Take a swim with us, yeah?”  
You groan “Aw, I don’t want to get naked.”  
“Suit yourself!” cries Porrim, tearing her shirt and bra off, then tossing her jeans and wedding ring on the pile for good measure “Make fucking way, kids!” she leaps off the edge of the rock, producing a massive splash that douses you.  
Well, you’re soaked now.  
What’s the harm? Onto the sand go your jeans, shirt, shoes and wedding ring. And into the water go you.  
Eridan submerges after you, watching with his usual wonder as your gills open up on the sides of your neck. It still amazes him that they work, after all this time you have spent pounding land.  
As the water closes over your head, a feeling of utter peacefulness closes over you as well, and you cannot for the life of you remember a time when you have not been this happy, this in love with your husband, and this optimistic about the paths life will lead you down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was it, folks, and I hope the ending didn't disappoint too much. It was a pleasure to write this as much as it was to have people getting so enthusiastic about the story. A sincere thank-you to everyone who stuck it out this far, who lurked, or who commented or kudos-ed or just did whatever. Every single piece of interaction was greatly appreciated on this end, I can assure you.   
> And that's pretty all I can say, so, once again, thanks for the ride, you guys, and see you around.


End file.
